A Course in Cyborg Semiotics 1793626855, 9781793626851

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Preface
Introduction
An Introduction to Cyborg Semiotics
Structures in Cyborg Semiotics
Principles of Cyborg Semiotics
Cybernetic Valuation
Cyborg Grammar and Relationships
The Deconstruction of Cyborg Semiotics
Conclusion
Glossary
Works Cited
Index
About the Author

Citation preview

A Course in Cyborg Semiotics

A Course in Cyborg Semiotics Mick Howard

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE, United Kingdom Copyright © 2024 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 9781793626851 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781793626868 (ebook) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Preface vii Introduction

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Chapter 1: An Introduction to Cyborg Semiotics



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Chapter 2: Structures in Cyborg Semiotics



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Chapter 3: Principles of Cyborg Semiotics



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Chapter 4: Cybernetic Valuation



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Chapter 5: Cyborg Grammar and Relationships Chapter 6: The Deconstruction of Cyborg Semiotics Conclusion Glossary

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153 169

Works Cited Index





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About the Author



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Preface

This project you have before you is the result of work conducted over a decade of my life. It is not simply a work of theory, but rather an attempt to share the lens through which I understand the world, my attempt to find commonality in perspective by granting others a look through this lens. There is a certain amount of arrogance in doing so, I suppose. The idea that you have a unique view that has not previously been explored, or at least spoken, bears a certain amount of hubris. However, Reader Two’s comments are always there to remind one of one’s own flaws, though nearly crippling imposter syndrome that shuts one down for months at a time serves nearly as well. Yet after countless hours, refinements, tears, screaming, and general chaos: I present to you my theory of cyborg semiotics. I originated this theory because I believe that we currently view the world through a distorted perspective, one that leads to technological apathy and indifference. We see ourselves as separate from our technologies; they are one thing, we are another. As such, there is a severe lack of accountability for the results of our technological progress and actions. Both individually and collectively, the consequences of the creation and application of technology are assigned elsewhere, to someone that is the not-me. There is little sense of participation in the collective signifying cyborg, and less still is there an acknowledgement that the meaning of the cyborg can be other-than-as-it-is. In fact, in many cases there are attempts to revert meaning, to turn back time to previous meanings of cyborgs despite the fact that nearly every constituent part of the previous cyborg no longer exists. What I desire from this theory is a way forward out of the collective morass of technological indifference and a new sense of participation in a world that has always been cybernetic and is becoming increasingly more complex in its formations and structures. Positioning ourselves as part-of rather than as separated-from technology means we are responsible, individually and collectively, for the consequences of actions taken by the cyborgs in which we signify. vii

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It is because of this that I have chosen to begin with a base of Saussurian linguistics. Cyborgs are structures, and they are recognized as such by those who view them. They have forms, components, mass, and weight. I will not argue that there are not other, perhaps more contemporary, approaches that can be taken to this topic. There most certainly are. However, I feel that there is value in understanding the structure of something before deconstructing it, so to speak. There are perhaps flaws in this approach, as I am sure will be pointed out by reviewers. But I do not posit this theory as an end point, but rather as a beginning to what I hope will be many fruitful conversations in the future. Saussurian linguistics also has two distinct advantages for initiating the discussion of cyborg semiotics. The first is its emphasis on the intentionality of signification as a communicative act. When I discuss cyborg semiotics, I am not referring to the accidental creation of signs through the happenstance convergence of bodies and technologies. I do not believe that these cybernetic signs are any more accidental than the creation of words through the random convergence of letters and their resultant meaning; rather, a huge part of the sociocultural difficulties we currently face with technological apathy is a result of the belief that such meanings are random rather than intentional and that they possess consistent, repeatable rules for their formation. Acknowledging the existence of these rules and their consequences, as well as the intentionality of their formation, provides the means to shift them to something more positive and progressive. Secondly is the arbitrary nature of the sign. It seems that the common assumption right now is that because technologies do, they mean, and that this connection is intrinsic. As will be explored later in this work, I strongly disagree with that assessment. Technologies in and of themselves that are unassociated with bodies have, in fact, no meaning, and the meaning of cyborgs formed with technologies can be altered. As with words, transforming the meaning of a cyborg is no easy task, as they have weight and impetus, but it can be done. To believe that the meaning of a cyborg is unalterable is to give in to despair and nihilism. By recognizing that technologies have no meaning and that cyborgs do, efforts can be made to shift the meaning of a given cyborg. It is this arbitrary nature of the sign that provides hope for progress. There are many people I wish to thank for helping me bring this work to light. The first is my family: my wife, Tammy, and my children, Justice, Griffin, and Avalon. When I decided to return to academia and leave a very well-paying job in the business world and uproot them, moving over two thousand miles to Alaska to initiate my master’s degree and then over five thousand miles to Tennessee to earn my doctorate, they never hesitated in their support, despite the chaos and losing over 90 percent of my annual

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income. They were, and continue to be, the greatest blessing in my life, and I am eternally grateful for them and their support. During my master’s program, I want to acknowledge Dan Kline and Toby Widdicombe. As I was searching to position my own thoughts within the larger world of theory, Dan Kline guided me to The Cyborg Handbook, the work that helped me understand how my own worldview fit into the larger realm of theory. Toby Widdicombe saw how this interest in the blending of bodies and technologies fit into social theory and my desire to help form a better world, and he graciously guided my thesis on Terminator II and utopian theory. Without their academic guidance, this project would never have come to fruition. In my PhD program, I wish to thank Marion Hollings. When my dissertation, the project that led to this work, was struggling and my chair at the time realized new leadership was needed, she stepped in and with a reassuring hand nudged me back on track. Perhaps the most influential words spoken to me over the course of my academic career were by her when I was on the edge of full-blown panic and she recognized it, saying softly, “Oh, don’t worry, you’re doing just fine.” I have revisited those words frequently in moments of stress. I absolutely must thank my editor, Jessie Tepper, who has been more than patient with me, shepherding this project through so many hoops. Her steady and calming notes, emails, and conversations have been essential to the completion of this project. Finally, to my longest running friends in academia, Sarah Gray and Margaret Johnson, who fought through graduate school with me and eventually worked with me as professors, I wish to express my sincerest thanks for your friendship and your ears during my struggles both personally and professionally. I cannot begin to express to you how much you have both meant to me. You deserve nothing but joy and happiness. And now, dear reader, enter the realm of the cyborg.

Introduction

The work of this text is to redefine the struggle of identity and power, shifting it away from the disconnected body and to the interconnected cyborg. By limiting the definition of the struggle to the body, half of the battlefield is automatically lost. Those who seek to preserve and reinforce oppressive power structures focus exclusively on bodies, giving lip service or even real support to progressive reforms, while maintaining restrictive measures on the machinic mechanisms that keep oppressed bodies contained and restricted. Donna Haraway, whose seminal text “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” introduced an integrated theoretical approach to studying bodies and technologies: Cyborg politics is the struggle for language and the struggle against perfect communication, against the one code that translates all meaning perfectly, the central dogma of phallogocentrism. That is why cyborg politics insist on noise and advocate pollution, rejoicing in the illegitimate fusions of animal and machine. These are the couplings which make Man and Woman so problematic, subverting the structure of desire, the force imagined to generate language and gender, and so subverting the structure and modes of reproduction of "Western" identity, of nature and culture, of mirror and eye, slave and master, body and mind. “We” did not originally choose to be cyborgs, but choice grounds a liberal politics and epistemology that imagines the reproduction of individuals before the wider replications of “texts.” (Haraway 1991, 176)

In order to subvert these structures of power, we must understand how cyborg identity is formed, structured, and controlled. Most importantly, we must embrace ourselves as fully cyborgs rather than as merely human, or our technological components will never truly be our own. Those who control hegemonic structures will continue to sit ensconced on their clockwork thrones, winding our gears and sending us tottering down their chosen paths while we pride ourselves on flexing our muscles. We will be oblivious to the fact that our flesh may be guided by our internal mechanisms, and if we remain ignorant of their existence or dismissive of their power, our flesh will

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be subject to those who manipulate our machnic components. We misread both ourselves and others because of this limited perspective. Jaques Lacan famously claimed that the unconscious is structured like a language. He examined linguistic processes such as metonymy and metaphor, demonstrating how they paralleled mental maneuvers, specifically for patients in therapy. He used this decoding of imagery and symptoms to decipher the root causes of patients’ mental ailments. Lacan believed that if therapists detangled patients’ confusion of the signifier with the signified and analyzed these inconsistencies with their patients, therapists could assist their patients in coming to a clearer and more accurate understanding of the way they interpret the world and, more specifically, how they misinterpret it. The mission of cyborg semiotics is comparable to that of Lacanian psychoanalysis. While Lacan’s object of study was the structure of subconscious, cyborg semiotics takes as its object of study the structure of combinations of bodies and technologies. The seminal claim of cyborg semiotics is that humans interpret the combinations of bodies and technologies using the same techniques that they use to decode language, just as Lacanian psychology uses linguistic principles to decode patients’ symptoms. Marshall McLuhan famously argues that “[t]he medium is the message. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments” (McCluhan 2001, 26). I wish to take this one step further: the medium is the cyborg, and the cyborg is the message. Social and cultural change is impossible without understanding the way cybernetic structures function as environment. As humans traverse their daily lives, observing the world around themselves, they interpret combinations of bodies and technologies using the principles of linguistics initially established by Saussure; as such, interpretations of these combinations are subject to the same structural “misfires” that occur in language or in patients suffering from mental illnesses. These misfires result in flawed interpretive interactions between people, leading to a breakdown of communication. Such flawed communication almost inevitably leads to conflict as motives, intents, and desires are misread. It is my hope that if humans can understand the mechanism of communication used in cyborg semiotics, a method of communication that they are constantly and unconsciously using to the point that it is taken as natural rather than constructed, then conflicts arising from such miscommunication may be avoided through decreased miscommunication. However, unless these principles are understood, humanity will continue to reproduce the same communicative misfires, just as a patient with mental health issues will continue to grind on the same mental health problems unless they can come to an understanding of the root source of their problems via therapeutic interventions (in fact, due to the presence of social media, such misfires may go viral, reproducing throughout a society at a rapid rate). That is, it is my

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hope that cyborg semiotics will provide a therapeutic framework for treating social ailments. The work that can be accomplished by this field is varied and has widespread application. Such work includes, but is not limited to the following: 1.  Tracking the development of various cyborg identities across both culture(s) and time(s). 2.  Critical comparison of these identities, examining the cultural forces that permit and encourage certain cyborg identities and compositions while denying and discouraging others. 3.  Exploring cybernetic “dialects,” such as regional “accents” that utilize deviations in cybernetic composition while maintaining comparable identities and meanings. 4.  Examining attempts to codify cyborg “spelling” using justifications such as religion or science to fix the composition of cyborgs, thus denying certain bodies access to desired identities. 5.  Describing and critiquing the rules of cyborg grammar that control the manner in which individual cyborgs form meaning within larger narratives. 6.  Deconstructing prejudices assumed as natural and rational and recognizing their artificial and constructed nature. In addition to the principle claim that cyborgs are subject to linguistic interpretation, there are a few other structural components that form the basis for the application of cyborg semiotics: 1.  “Humans” are more accurately called “cyborgs,” and the cyborg condition is intrinsic. 2.  “Humans” as it is currently understood implies a flawed Cartesian dichotomy that leads to misunderstandings not just of how bodies and technologies actually function together but also how they may function together. 3.  The cyborg is the equivalent of the Saussurian signifier. It only gains meaning within a cy-syst (short for cybernetic system, the biotechnological equivalent of a language), at which point it may become a sign. Cyborgs are merely random bodies and technologies existing in proximity to each other until meaning is assigned to those particular combinations; When I speak of a cyborg, then, I am referring to particular combination of bodies and technologies to which meaning has been assigned within a cy-syst. A construct is the equivalent of the Saussurian signifier, formed of biological and technological components like written language is composed of letters, yet like a signifier,

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lacking meaning until joined with one within the cy-syst. All of these concepts will be broken down in greater detail throughout this text. 4.  The connection between what a cyborg does and what it signifies is arbitrary. a.  As such, the connection between what a cyborg signifies and the components that form a cyborg are equitably arbitrary. 5.  Cyborgs have a null-value signification outside of a cy-syst. 6.  Technologies independent of a body have a null-value signification. 7.  Bodies independent of technologies may signify within a given cy-syst, but the range of their signification is exceptionally limited. 8.  Bodies are usually denied access to a technology not because a given body is unable to form a successful interfaction (the connection between two or more components, either biological or technological, that results in recognition by members of a cy-syst that they are participating in the formation of a cyborg) with a technology (though such a claim is often made by those doing the denying), but rather because the body is deemed unworthy to participate in the interfaction and/or the resultant cyborg would be considered unnatural or blasphemous even, should the interfaction prove successful. 9.  While the reasons for denying a body access to a given technology may vary (race, gender, sexual orientation, class, etc. of the body), the implementation of said restrictions is consistent with the principles of cyborg semiotics, and the results are the same regardless of the reason for the denial: those in power remain in power because they are permitted to successfully integrate with the technologies that participate in the formation of cyborgs that signify power, while those who lack access to form identities with these technologies remain oppressed. A cy-syst is a system of signs governed by cultural rules of interpretations. These signs must be both created and interpreted according to these rules in order to form a cy-syst. The system of signification must be studied separately from the function of the technology. In Saussurian terms, a cy-cyst would be la langue. I wish to pause here to differentiate between cyborg semiotics and digital semiotics. Cyborg semiotics does not focus on media or digital studies, but rather the inherent cyborg condition beginning with the first recognition that a person with a pointed stick meant something different than one without and humans’ attempts to then not only use technology, but to mean something different through that integration. I do not seek to necessarily argue for or against a given technology or even groups of technology in this text, but instead postulate how technologies with bodies create meaning and how rejection of meaning is used to deny specific bodies access to technologies

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that form cyborgs that are recognized as having power; that is, I will be examining the consequences of denial or access to a technology. Cyborg semiotics is the study of language itself, while digital semiotics is the study of Swahili. They are both worthwhile pursuits, but they are not to be conflated. Cyborg semiotics seeks to understand how meaning is created and narratives are formed through the blending of bodies and technologies, while digital semiotics is simply one form, a subset, of this broader field. In addition, cyborg semiotics argues that in order for meaning to be formed, a body must participate in the formation of the cyborg, and that without a human body, there can be no meaning. Technology without the body is simply inert, a meaningless lump, and bodies themselves possess little meaning without technologies, and what they do possess is largely undifferentiated. In addition, cyborg semiotics is not arguing for or against different technologies in and of themselves, but rather examining how meaning is formed through their interactions with bodies; that is, rather than saying, “This technology is harmful. We must eliminate it,” cyborg semiotics says, “We are thinking of technology in a way that causes this technology to be used in this manner that is potentially harmful. If we think of technology blended with this body differently, recognizing our own control over the meanings, perhaps it will not be used so.” These interactions can be harmful, reductive, or demeaning, which will be examined and is a worthwhile application of this theory, but it is not the theory itself; the goal is to understand why and how people create meaning through technological interactions. Once the why and how are understood by a broader populace, the mechanisms creating harm may be dismantled. While all of these points will be explored in greater depth throughout this text, I will initially focus on the first claim: “human” is an inaccurate term that does not, nor has it ever, accurately described the subject it purports to be defining. “Cyborg” as a descriptor is more precise and would create less confusion, as this is the intrinsic condition of the bodies we consider “human”; it acknowledges sum of the entity it claims to signify, while “human” is a term that is limited to the body, the fleshy shell. It sloughs the technologies that create “cyborg.” The term “cyborg” in science fiction is often ascribed to bodies that are physically bonded with technologies, organic tissue fused with gears, computer chips, and fission reactors; however, many academics are currently applying the term more broadly to unbonded combinations of bodies and technologies, recognizing that full physical integration is not required in order to form a cyborg. “Cyborg” embraces both the organic and technological components that create the unique beings that we currently limit to the sign “human.” What technologies may be used to form a cyborg (and subsequently, when precisely humans “evolved” into cyborgs) is still a matter of some

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contention. Donna Haraway, the founder of cyborg theory, claims that “cyborgs are compounded of special kinds of machines and special kinds of organisms appropriate to the late twentieth century. Cyborgs are post-Second World War hybrid entities” (Haraway 1991, 1). Chris Hables Gray, Heidi Figueroa-Sarriera, and Steven Mentor, the editors of The Cyborg Handbook, concur with Haraway, claiming that while the cyborg relationship may have prescient echoes in earlier human/technology relationships, the quality and quantity of relationships make current cyborg entity a completely different entity from its predecessors. (Gray 1995, 6) These arguments are temporalcentric; that is, they prioritize current cyborg experience over that of cyborgs of an earlier age by denying their existence, or at their most generous, granting them precursor status to the modern cyborgs. To return to our earlier illustration, this argument is like arguing that Old English was not a language because it is not modern English. While modern English certainly has words, concepts, or structures that were not possessed by speakers of Old English, arguing that it was not a language because it lacked these characteristics would be specious. As such, the argument that a certain quantity of technologies shifts an entity from mere human to cyborg is fundamentally flawed. While technologies have undoubtably increased in quantity in the post–World War II era, how many technological integrations does it take to form a cyborg? One? Ten? Ten thousand? While an increased quantity of technological interactions may form increasingly sophisticated and complex cyborgs and, thus, permit a wider variety of cyborgs, using technological quantity as a methodology for establishing the mere existence of a cyborg is a poor conceptual framework. A quantitative “tipping point” from human to cyborg would be both arbitrary and impossible to accurately establish. Must a language have a certain number of words before it can be considered a language, or is it a language because of the work that it does in communicating ideas? For that matter, does a word require specific letters or meanings before it can be called a word, or is it enough that it is recognized and understood by those seeing or hearing it? Establishing a qualitative measurement is an equally nebulous proposition. What precisely about the cyborg experience changed with World War II? From a qualitative perspective, did the writers of the Renaissance have a qualitatively inferior experience with their quill pen and iron gall ink than the Modernists did with their typewriters, or current writers do with their laptops? Does the present-day seaman have a qualitatively different relationship with their destroyer than members of Sir Francis Drake’s fleet had with their galleons? Technologies have always been a fundamental part of people’s lived experience, from the baby slings of early homo sapiens who needed to rapidly flee from predators with their non-clinging child to the Wall Street

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mom pushing her Bugaboo™ jogging stroller before rushing off to work. It is the existence of the defining relationship between technology and body that creates the cyborg, not the sophistication of the technological components involved, just as with a language, the sophistication of the linguistic structures does not create the language, but rather its ability to signify. Technology is not only a crucial part of lived experience, but it has also shaped humanity biologically and mentally. Timothy Taylor notes that human life without technology would be unrecognizable; in fact, technology is not only important to understanding human existence, but both humans’ physical structures and mental processes have morphed over the millenia to readily accommodate technological interactions. Physical evolutions include changes in body shape and head size to accommodate a larger brain (Taylor 2014, 6). Humans’ bodies molded themselves to accommodate technological assistants more readily; as such, even at a biological level, humans adjust to their cybernetic condition. While it is easy to see the physiological impact of technology upon the human body, less apparent but more crucial is the mental integration of technology into the human cyborg. What makes people “human” is, in fact, the integration of technological components into not only their functionality, but also their identities. Andy Clark comments that “[t]he line between biological self and technological world was, in fact, never very firm. Plasticity and multiplicity are our true constants, and new technologies merely dramatize our oldest puzzles (prosthetics and telepresence are just walking sticks and shouting, cyberspace is just one more place to be)” (Clark 2003, 8). Humans have tried to distinguish their biological bodies from their technological components, restricting the technological to something exterior to identity while embracing the biological as “me.” But Pierre Teilhard de Chardin observes, “Technology has a role that is biological in the strict sense of the word: it has every right to be included in the scheme of nature. From this point of view . . . there ceases to be any distinction between the artificial and the natural, between technology and life, since all organisms are the result of invention; if there is any difference, the advantage is on the side of the artificial” (de Chardin 1947, 159). In his view, acceptance of this integration is crucial to enlightenment. Clark also counters the false paradigm separating organic and technological components by pointing out that brute force mergers of the two are not only unnecessary to form a cyborg, but that cyborgs are, in fact, a merger of body, brain, and technologies, whether those technologies are fully integrated in the biological skin-bag or external to it. To more fully develop and name this concept, I am introducing the neologism of “interfacting” (used earlier) to allow more ready discussion of the concept. This is a merger of “interface” and “interact,” and through its creation, I hope to reduce some of the confusion around the concept of how

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cyborgs are formed. This term refers to the intimate and complex connections between human and technologies, regardless of the level of physical connectivity, that permit the formation of a recognizable cybernetic identity. “Interface” carries neither the depth of connective intimacy that I wish to convey, nor the appropriate structural sophistication. An “interaction” may be transitory, lingering for a moment, and float away without leaving an impact. The cyborg is the trinitarian merger of body, brain, and technology either physically fused or otherwise interfacting; without all three of these in the interfaction, the creature termed as “human” ceases to exist. As Arthur Bradley and Louis Armand observe, “technology in this way appears less an instrumentum of an a priori ‘reason,’ than an ontological state. Consequently, technicity names something which can no longer be seen as just a series of prostheses or technical artefacts—which would be merely ‘supplemental’ (or supernumerary to our nature)—but the basic and enabling condition of our life world” (Bradley and Armand 2006, location 100). While the nature of the supplement will be addressed in greater detail later in this text, the point raised by both Clark and Bradley and Armand is crucial: the signifier “human” does not exist without technology. Technology is essential to full signification of “human”; without technology, “human” would signify much closer to “animal” than what we understand as “human.” Our understanding of “human” requires technological involvement, even if it is at the most basic level of digging holes with a fashioned piece of bark. Unfortunately, the sign “human” continues to prioritize the body over the technic, which is why I argue for its replacement with the more balanced “cyborg.” While such nuances may seem to be splitting hairs, ignoring the implications of such a distinction can have disastrous consequences. As Clark comments, the human brain uniquely evolved to accept and seek out technological interventions in order to accomplish daily tasks; these technologies form a continuously expanding and evolving matrix around the individual or group of individuals integrating technologies into their identities. Clark argues, “It is the presence of this unusual plasticity that makes humans (but not dogs, cats, or elephants) natural-born cyborgs: beings primed by Mother Nature to annex wave upon wave of external elements and structures as part of their own extended minds” (Clark 2003, 31). Clark’s argument is important because it posits the cyborg condition as not reliant upon any quantity or quality of technological integration, but frames it as the mental capacity for interfacting with technology, making technology not only a party to their functional daily lives but also their minds and identities; that is, interfacting with a either particular type or quantity of technology is not what creates a cyborg, but it is the brain’s construction that seeks out and seizes upon technology, integrating it into an individual or group identity that does so. As such, attempting to formulate a clear distinction between the technology

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and the user’s body is not only unnecessary but, in fact, counterproductive, as it creates a false synecdoche in which the part (the human brain contained within the organic body) is incorrectly assumed to be the whole (the cyborg with all of its organic components and extended technologies). In turn, this false interpretation leads to fundamentally flawed assumptions about not only cyborg individuals, but also the cy-systs within which they operate. Clarke uses an example that I would like to further elaborate upon to illustrate this point. If someone is asked, “I’m sorry, do you know the time?,” people do not respond by saying, “No, I am afraid not,” before looking at their watch or phone and saying, “Ah, now I know! It’s 4:38.” Most people will simply respond, “Yes, I do,” before glancing at the appropriate time-keeping device within their possession, such as a watch or a phone. The fact that people know that this information is readily accessible is what prompts their unhesitating affirmative response; that particular technological component is part of their self-constructed cybernetic identity. In fact, should their phone be dead or their watch not wound, a look of startlement or consternation will frequently flash across their face, indicating their surprise at their unexpected incapacity to procure the requested knowledge. It is as if a piece of their brain has been suddenly shut off (this type of power outage will be explored in greater depth later) (Clark 2003, 41–42). This mental integration is indicative of the “natural” cyborg condition. In fact, as I was writing this, another perfect exemplar occurred. My wife was working on a situation with our taxes (always a joy) and was using her phone to access information. As I walked from the study to the bathroom, I passed her sitting on the bed in our bedroom. She looked up at me and asked, “Hey, will you tell me what our balance was in November of 2018?” I had to say no because I had left my phone in the study, as I was just going to be away momentarily. She gazed at me quizzically and muttered, “That’s weird.” My ability to provide this simple piece of information on demand was assumed as a natural part of my identity. When in a position that readily sharing this knowledge was not immediately available, the situation was regarded as “weird.” In that moment, I was not the person she expected me to be. The phone, with all of the capabilities associated with it, is a technology that is fully integrated into my cybernetic identity, with all of the implications that level of interfaction implies, including ready access to knowledge of my bank account’s balance from over two years ago. My wife fully expected “me” to know this information. However, this natural cyborg condition is not limited strictly to technologies purveying mental knowledge. For example, a daughter might approach her mother and ask, “Will you take me to the dance in Tulsa tonight?” The presumption is that her mother will not reply, “Sure, hop right on!” and give her daughter a piggyback ride in her Vera Wang chiffon dress and Manolo

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Blahnik pumps. Instead, she will likely say, “Of course I can,” gas up the Prius, and ride to the event while car dancing together to Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings” through her daughter’s cell phone, which is connected to the car’s speakers via Bluetooth. Built into the “you” of the daughter’s question is that the car is a part of the cyborg entity that is her mother. Should that technology be removed from her mother’s identity (wrecked car, suspended license, repossession, blindness, etc.), the daughter wouldn’t ask if her mother was capable of taking her; the presumption would be that since the technology of the vehicle was no longer part of her mother’s cyborg identity, “taking me to the dance in Tulsa” was also not within the parameters of that identity. Instead, she might ask, “Do you know someone who can take me to the dance in Tulsa?” or “Can I go to the dance in Tulsa with Jenny?” Understanding the inability of her mother’s cyborg identity to fulfill the required task, and thus to mean in a certain way, she will instead seek out an alternative cyborg who can accomplish what she needs. However, the difference between what a cyborg means and what it does will be explored in greater detail in a subsequent chapter. When a technology is removed from cyborg’s construction, the identity of the cyborg may or may not also be altered, much in the same way as if a limb or an organ was removed from a body or a letter removed from a word. Some of these make little difference to the core identity of the cyborg, in the same manner as having an appendix removed has little overall difference to the daily functioning, capabilities, or identity of the body from which it was removed; as such, any real change to the identity of the cyborg is minimal, and they are read in largely the same manner as they were prior to the removal. However, if the technology forms a larger or more integral part of the cybernetic identity within that particular cy-syst, the difference will be drastic in the same way as removing the letter “t” from trapper would result in a different sign. Technologies can be either corporeal or cognizant in the way they build identities; that is, they are either part of how a cyborg is understood physically or mentally. Corporeal technologies are associated with a cyborg’s physical interfactions. For example, cars are associated with a cyborg’s movement and speed, chairs are associated with resting (or perhaps changing a lightbulb, though not without some degree of danger), and plows with digging furrows for planting. Some of these technologies have been around in various forms for millennia; versions of chairs have existed since shaped rocks and stumps, and carts and chariots serve as the technological ancestors of cars. Corporeal technologies alter the manner in which a body interfacts with the physical world, typically attempting to enhance its functionality (though enhancement is not the only function of technologies). This enhanced (or in some cases,

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restricted or altered) functionality may become an intrinsic part of the subsequent cyborg’s identity if recognized as such within its cy-syst. Cognizant technologies are associated with a cyborg’s mental interfactions. These are thought to enhance a body’s ability to process information. Examples of this type of technology would include books, abaci, computers, and writing utensils. Though these technologies are interfacted with physically, such as moving beads on an abacus or fingers striking keys on a computer keyboard, they are interpreted as assisting with a cyborg’s mental functioning. That is, the physical interfaction is the mechanism to create the data needed for a mental interfaction. Conversely, mental interfactions are required for a body to successfully interfact with corporeal technologies; a car cannot be driven correctly without the mind making decisions about braking, accelerating, turning, and so forth. However, the interpreted primary function of the car is not for a cyborg to merely make those decisions. The mental decisions are regarded as simply guiding the physical function of attaining the car’s destination; they are a means to an end, not an end unto themselves. As such, though physical interfactions are required for cognizant technologies to function, those interfactions are read as ancillary to the technologies’ primary function of enhancing (or, in some cases, inhibiting or even transforming) mental abilities. Obviously, no technology may be regarded as either one or the other, but they are blended in various proportionalities. Possessing and/or understanding how to use certain “baseline” technologies (either corporeal or cognizant) has a significant impact on the way a cyborg is decoded, depending on the cy-syst within which it is functioning. Not owning a car in my current city (Oklahoma City) may be interpreted by a potential employer as a sign of potential unreliability, leading to them passing over me as a candidate for a position. However, in a region where public transportation is more developed (Portland, OR) or walking to work is regarded as normal (New York City), the absence of this corporeal technology may have little impact on the employer’s interpretation of my cybernetic identity. In fact, such an absence may be read as an eco-conscious decision in those communities, thus enhancing my probability of integrating with their company and being more compatible with the identity of their corporation (a larger cyborg, joining my individual cybernetic components to their biological and technological components to be subsequently interpreted as a single cybernetic entity). The same principles hold true with cognizant technologies. Since an individual cyborg’s capabilities are radically dissimilar with and without access to a laptop or, better yet, a smart phone, cybernetic entities will interact with and react differently to a cyborg according to their access to such common technology. Without access to the information readily offered via a web-connected device, an individual cyborg in modern society is virtually

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considered mentally and socially handicapped, as it is unable to either access or transmit adequate quantities of data in a timely manner. Our cy-syst reads cyborgs disconnected through the lack of a smart phone as limited both mentally and socially; lacking both adequate access to information and the ability to transmit information via this particular technology is interpreted as inadequacy. This status would be comparable whether the cyborg is unable to access the technology due to an inability to possess it (such as a lack of funding) or because the body lacks the skills to utilize the technology (a luddite or an untrained user). Either way, the sociocultural interpretation of that cyborg would be comparable: flawed. The resultant inadequacy may be construed differently depending upon the cause, as might the potentially corrective efforts required to upgrade the cyborg, but the cyborg’s status as insufficient would remain equivalent. Cyborg semiotics seeks to explore the manner in which cy-systs are created and function to interpret cybernetic entities both internal and external to themselves. It attempts to define the rules by which meaning is made from the cyborgs formed from the interfactions of technological and organic components. It argues that the rules by which cy-systs make meaning from cyborgs are derived from those defined by Ferdinand de Saussure in his seminal text Course in General Linguistics for making meaning from language. Specifically, it will examine the concept of cybernetic signification and how the functions of a cyborg within a cy-syst are comparable to a linguistic sign within a language. The individual cyborg will be equated to Saussure’s “utterance,” or la parole, while a cy-syst operates in a comparable manner to a linguistic system, or la langue. Several scholars have made the argument that either creating or understanding such rules is impossible. Among them is Jean Baudrillard, who in The System of Objects (2005) claims that delimiting this division with technology is an impossible task: Apart from technical objects, with which as subjects we never have anything to do, we shall see that the two levels of objective denotation and connotation (whereby the object is cathected, commercialized and personalized, whereby it attains utility and enters into a cultural system) are not, under today’s conditions of production and consumption, separable in the way the levels of language [langue] and speech [parole] are separable in linguistics. (8)

Baudrillard is, to a degree, correct. As referenced in point seven above, technologies independent of a body have a null-value signification; however, cyborgs, those particular combinations of technologies and bodies functioning within a cy-syst, are absolutely separable into la langue and la parole. Cyborg semiotics demonstrates how this may be accomplished, establishes

Introduction

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fundamental rules for separation and identification of individual cyborgs, and describes the processes by which such rules are instituted through sociocultural means. The first chapter, “An Introduction to Cyborg Semiotics,” draws upon the introduction of Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics in relation to cyborg cygnification. Specifically, it sets parameters for the study of cyborg study of cyborg semiotics, defining the object of this field of study. Both cyborgs and cy-systs are defined, and the historical evolution of cyborgs and cy-systs are compared to that of words and linguistic systems. Chapter 2, “Structures in Cyborg Semiotics,” examines some of the internal characteristics of the discipline, and introduces several neologisms that help frame concepts that, while similar to those within linguistics, possess their own unique cybernetic traits. Chapter 3, “Principles of Cyborg Semiotics,” will move on to part 1 of Course in General Linguistics, “General Principles.” First, it places concepts of sign, signification, and signal in relative position to cyborgs, the cultural concepts which delimit cyborgs, and physical organic/technological combinations. Next, Saussure’s rules of variability and invariability of the sign are applied to cyborg cygnification. The arbitrary nature of the sign is shown to apply equitably to cyborg cygnification, as is collective inertia as it relates to fixing meaning. Additionally, the axis of simultaneity and the axis of succession will be demonstrated to be functional tools for creating distinctions within cyborg cygnification. Finally, it reveals the comparable merits of Saussure’s chessboard metaphor as it also relates to cyborg cygnification. The fourth chapter, “Cybernetic Valuation,” looks at “Synchornic Linguistics,” part 2 of Course in General Linguistics, which considers the rules that govern a semiotic system at a given temporal point as opposed to those controlling its evolution. The chapter then examines the components of a cy-syst, including how to delimt one system from another. Narrative principles raised by Bruce Clarke in Posthuman Metamorphosis: Narrative and Systems are used relative to Saussurian linguistic concepts to define this delimitation. Next, the concept of linguistic value, specifically as it relates to the principles of exchange, are placed into a context of technological equivalency; what is dissimilar that a technology can be exchanged for, and what can be substituted for a give technology? Chapter 5, “Cyborg Grammar and Relationships,” will continue this examination of values and lead into a discussion of syntagmatic and associative relationships within a linguistic system, demonstrating how cybernetic cygnification bears a comparable relationship. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the principles of grammar and how those same principles are used to create a cyborg grammar.

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Chapter 6, “The Deconstruction of Cyborg Semioticss,” examines the manner in which the controls upon discourse as explained by Michel Foucault in “The Discourse on Language” transfer to regulating cy-systs. I will argue that cybernetic discourse functions in the same manner as linguistic discourse. Examples from bell hooks and the toy industry will be utilized to demonstrate how these disciplinary tools control the discourse of a cy-syst.

Chapter 1

An Introduction to Cyborg Semiotics

The history of linguistics is relatively easy to trace, as Saussure does in the first section of the introduction to his Course in General Linguistics; unfortunately, tracking the historical evolution of cyborg ontology is a task of greater complexity since the patterns are not as cleanly divided by factors such as culture or geography. Yet humans historically have attempted to differentiate themselves from other life forms as well as from inanimate objects using various classification methods; their attempts at taxonomy can provide a rudimentary paradigm for understanding the progression of our classification of the cyborg framework. Allison Muri notes in The Enlightenment Cyborg: A History of Communication and Control in the Human Machine (1660–1830) that as far back as the Greeks, delimitation between human and animals was an object of study, as “Aristotle proposed three souls in De Anima: the vegetative soul responsible for growth and decay, possessed by plants, animal, and humans: the animal soul, which confers motion and sensation upon animals and humans, and the rational soul, which is the conscious and intellectual soul in the heart, and is possessed solely by humans” (Muri 2007, 104). Aristotle’s structure of a triple soul privileges humanity, assigning it a superior existence to that assigned to plants and animals. In doing so, he effectively isolates humanity not only from other life forms, but he also denigrates the inanimate objects that form cyborgs. In this case, Aristotle falls victim to the aforementioned flawed Cartesian dichotomy of humans as separate from their cyborg condition. Despite this crucial oversight, Aristotle does argue in favor of the soul as embodied; that is, individuality is inherently tied to the physical form. Physicality, then, becomes crucial to identity, with the body a presumed part of identity. Nor is Aristotle alone in this premise; it is also supported via biblical interpretation. Genesis 2:7 reads, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” While God provided the breath, Adam was not a 15

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living soul without a body within which that breath could reside. The tradition of physicality playing a formative role in individual identity is firmly woven into Western tradition from both spiritual and humanistic philosophies; unfortunately, it is too often used as a restrictive factor rather than one that opens possibilities for expression. Linguistic methodologies of classification and taxonomy generate, not identify, reality, including that of the body. Haraway denies language the status of innocent observer of an a priori existence, but she claims instead that it creates knowledge through delimitation of concepts: “Language generates reality in the inescapable context of power; it does not stand for or point to a knowable world hiding somewhere outside the ever-receding boundaries of particular social-historical enquiries” (Haraway 1991, 78). Language does not merely describe what exists, but instead frames it through a prescriptive lens that users of the language utilize to shape their understanding of reality. Aristotle’s classification of the soul, therefore, does not simply acknowledge a preexisting reality, but instead brings a particular reality into existence. The reality he generates through this division is anthropocentric, prioritizing the human body (including the brain, an organ of the human body) as both separate from and superior to the physicality of plants and animals. Furthermore, by failing to acknowledge within his taxonomy the possibilities of connectivity between humans and the technologies they create and, in turn, create them, he completely ignores the potential of nonorganic entities to form an essential component of the human condition, as well as isolating it from other organic systems. Aristotelean concepts comprise a formative keystone of Western philosophy and culture. Consequently, his diminution of animals and plants played a role in their devaluation in modern culture, viewed as simple resources to be consumed rather than coinhabitants of a complex and interconnected web of being. To an even greater degree, his complete dismissal of the machinic positions technology as the bastard stepchild of the organic, a cretinous slave comprised of clanking parts toiling ceaselessly beneath humans rather than the technological womb that birthed humanity. During the pre-Enlightenment era, Galen’s concept of animal spirits acting as an animistic force for physical bodies dominated both medical and scientific fields. Scientists and philosophers alike believed that these spirits enabled both sensory experiences as well as corporeal mobility. The Enlightenment witnessed a more thorough understanding of the body’s functionality. Rather than a mysterious vapor enlivening body and brain, the roles of the various components of the body were correctly attributed to mechanical operations, such as the pumping of the heart or bellows of the lungs (Muri 2007, 37–38). The revelation of equivalence between machinic and organic entities created spiderweb cracks throughout the perceived barrier separating them, opening up new possibilities for their connectivity. If humans did indeed operate on

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readily understood mechanical principles, then maybe they were not sacred creatures of divine origin. Scientific discourse increasingly focused on forming connections between the organic and machinic; carried to its logical conclusion, humans were either mere wind-up toys powered by gears and springs that would eventually lose their torque, or else they were gods themselves, imbuing their increasingly complex mechanistic minions with the clockwork breath of life. Either option undermined traditional notions of humans as the fallen apex of a divine creation. Unlike Enlightenment era philosophy, writers in the post-Enlightenment withdrew from the attempt to achieve human divinity through mechanical invention; the folly of Icarus weighed heavily on their thoughts, and any attempts to subsume God and Nature through human innovation were frequently shunned. In 1818, Mary Shelley penned Frankenstein, which many scholars consider to be the first work of science fiction. The reckless creation and subsequent abandonment of the monster warns against humans reaching into the fog of science without adequately foreseeing the consequences, especially should they subsequently abandon the creations that they brought forth. I would argue that all science fiction is about the attempt to interfact with technology in previously unimagined ways, and usually it addresses the subsequent failures of unsuccessful technological interfactions. Bruce Mazlish contends that we are now coming to realize that humans and the machines they create are continuous and that the same conceptual schemes that help explain the workings of the brain also explain the workings of a “thinking machine.” Human pride and its attendant refusal or hesitation to acknowledge this continuity form a substratum upon which much of the distrust of technology and an industrialized society has been reared. Ultimately this distrust . . . rests on the refusal by humans to understand and accept their nature—as beings continuous with the tools and machines they construct. (Mazlish 1993, 4–5)

Frankenstein demonstrates Mazlish’s argument perfectly, as it is Dr. Frankenstein’s refusal to acknowledge the Monster as a part of himself, his identity, that leads it to ravage those around him. He takes no responsibility for that which he has created, abandoning it as other-than-himself rather than part of his self-contained identity. He fears the Monster, and as Mazlish points out, such fear is justified as long as we alienate our technologies from our identities rather than as our creations and under our control (4). When we psychologically isolate our technological components from ourselves, we surrender control over them (or at least we pretend we have lost control over them), allowing them to roam without necessary control mechanisms and unleash what chaos they may.

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The twentieth century birthed technological marvels on a scale previously unimaginable, as both the complexity and sheer quantity of technological innovations spawned from human ingenuity dwarfed those of previous generations because of the manufacturing infrastructure of the established Industrial Era greeting the processing power of the incoming Digital Age. Consequently, integrations between human bodies and minds with their technological extensions multiplied exponentially. The resulting intricacy and novelty of some of these relationships forced reconsideration of how to define them, as previously, the human/technological link was often taken for granted as a master/servant relationship, much like Dr. Frankenstein felt it should be and was repelled when it supposedly rebelled. In 1960, two NASA scientists, Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline, coined the neologism “cyborg” to describe the sophisticated biomechanical entities that resulted from these fusions. Clynes and Kline produce the morphology of this creature from a regulatory standpoint: What are some of the devices necessary for creating self-regulating man-machine systems? This self-regulation must function without the benefit of consciousness in order to cooperate with the body’s own autonomous homeostatic controls. For the exogenously extended organization complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term “Cyborg.” (Clynes and Kline 1960, 30)

There are some fundamental components of their definition that are worth noting for exploration both here and in later chapters. First is the requirement of systemic self-regulation. The system created by the integration of machinic and organic components must be capable of independent self-regulation to be considered cybernetic. It must be able to perform, regulate, and control its processes without other systems interfering with its internal functionality. If a machinic/organic construct requires outside assistance to maintain adequate functionality (or, in the way we are viewing it, identity), then it does not meet the defined or functional parameters of a cyborg. Clynes and Klein’s definition also demand that a cyborg’s functionality be unconscious. An organic entity’s utilization of machinic components must be reflexive and automatic rather than requiring the organism to utilize higher-order consciousness to employ it. This functionality is comparable to organic processes such as breathing or the beating of the heart. Other less automatic but still intuitive processes that it may be compared to include chewing or walking, which are learned processes, but over time, become unconsciously functional. Try really thinking about walking as you stroll down the sidewalk. Focus on lifting your foot, moving it a set amount, and then setting it down evenly while simultaneously raising your other foot.

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Constantly attempting to focus on each minute step of this (actually incredibly complex) process would render this typically mundane task a haltingly mobile Gordian knot. Clark distinguishes between technologies that could be considered parts of a cyborg’s identity, which he defines as transparent, and those whose implementation still require conscious effort to deploy, which he terms opaque. Clark defines the features of both transparent and opaque technologies, noting that while transparent technologies are easily accessible, opaque technologies require additional effort to be utilized: Transparent technologies are tools that become so well fitted to, and integrated with, our own lives, biological capacities, and projects as to become . . . almost invisible in use. An opaque technology, by contrast, is one that keeps tripping the user up, requires skills and capacities that do not come naturally to the biological organism, and thus remains the focus of attention even during routine problem-solving activity. (Clark 2003, 37)

The transition that the relationship between a technology and a body passes through in the process of moving from opaque to transparent is driven by a combination of biological predisposition, training, and repetition of use. Although Clark does not explicitly distinguish between training and repetition, focusing instead on biology and training, such a distinction is inherently implied in his later analysis. Repetition is a part of training, though repetition may also be achieved through means other than formal training; for example, my teenaged daughter received no formal training in using TikTok, yet she is startlingly proficient in creating innovative and entertaining content for it. For purposes of clarity and terminology, I feel that it is important to separate these two distinct terms. A minimal amount of biological predisposition is necessary to utilize a technology; without some physical aptitude, no amount of training will transition a technology’s status from opaque to transparent. In Cyborg Citizen (Gray 2002), Chris Hables Gray comments on the deep immersion humans have with technology on a daily basis, though he differentiates between those Clark would consider transparent and opaque. Gray notes, “From the moment your clock radio wakes you in the morning, your life is intimately shaped by machines. Some of them we merge with unconsciously, such as the car we drive, the computer we work with, or the television we zone out in front of. Others involve more conscious interface. Overall the effect is an extraordinary symbiosis of humans and machines” (Gray 2002, 2–3). The distinction between opaque and transparent technologies is critical in order to achieve better cohesion between the organic and the machinic components of a cyborg. Much like sounds or letters must be placed in a recognizable pattern (sequence, proximity, etc.) for the sign to be acknowledged in a given

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language, so too must the components of a cyborg interfact in a translucent enough manner that renders it recognizable within the cy-syst. Recognizing when a given body requires more training or repetitions with a technology is important so that proper support may be given to a body in order to transition that technology from opaque to transparent. Or perhaps an alternate type of training than other bodies receive is necessary, or even a different amalgamation of technologies to interfact with the body is required to achieve the same results. For example, if an individual desires to interfact with even a basic technology, such as a battle ax, but lacks adequate strength to lift it (or, to a more extreme extent, lacks arms), decades of intensive training will not allow the individual to successfully interfact with the weapon. Conversely, if an individual possesses an extensive biological predisposition for a given technology but never receives training or the ability to regularly use the technology, then the results will be comparable; the technology will remain opaque. A burly and agile soldier may have a natural aptitude for wreaking mayhem with a battle ax, but without sufficient training he may be as likely to geld himself as slay an enemy. However, if the body currently lacks the physical strength but has the potential to develop that power, perhaps an intense physical regimen would be required before training with the ax; it is not that the body is incapable of possessing the necessary biological tools needed for interfaction, but that the transition from opaque to transparent must be achieved in steps. With current technology, even if the body lacked arms, cybernetic arms are available to create a system of body and technologies to allow the body to use the ax, bypassing what would typically be considered a biological function for one that just needs a couple technological components. Biological disposition is often presumed broadly across stereotypical genetic categories rather than individually evaluating the capabilities of a given body to interfact in a translucent manner with a given technology. The refusal to gauge an individual body’s predisposition for technological interfaction as opposed to categorically judging its capacities is especially prominent in gender bifurcation, which leads to socially codified technological restrictions. While these regulations are typically more numerous and stringently enforced for bodies coded as female, there is no lack of constraints for male coded bodies. Celeste Michelle Condit comments that [t]his does not deny that the average differences in secondary sexual characteristics between “men” and “women” (however defined) lack any impact. On average, women are smaller and have less upper body strength. Most women tend to bear children, while no men yet do so. Because of these differences, it is not sufficient to efface gender identity altogether. The existence of such average differences has made it possible to generate legal and institutional structures that

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discriminate, on average, against persons who are gendered in specific ways, without even making any explicit mention of gender. (Condit 2010, 387)

When people in charge of social control mechanisms enforce assumptions based on averages rather than particulars, transformative opportunities are denied to capable individuals as certain technologies remain opaque to certain bodies, despite whatever individual aptitude a particular body may have for attaining transparent technological interfaction. Clark’s demarcation of technologies as either transparent or opaque, which focuses on successful integration, is more useful for defining cyborgs as opposed to the temporal ones proposed by Haraway or Gray, Mentor, and Figueroa-Sarriera, which focus on quantity or sophistication of a given technology; these markers are exclusive to the condition of the technology as opposed to the effective interfaction of the organic and machinic components that compose the cyborg. Even more vague and less useful are the common markers of physical integration, such as melded limbs or jacked in technological interfaces, elements that do not speak to either the user’s reliance on or ability to form a translucent relationship with a technology, much less the impact upon the resultant cyborg’s identity. There are numerous “advanced” technologies in the early twenty-first century United States; however, having an abundance of these technologies around does not equate to any given body successfully interfacting with them to form their cybernetic identity. Only adequate biological predisposition in tandem with repetitious usage and/or training can render the technology transparent enough to do so. This does not mean that those who do not incorporate advanced technologies are not cyborgs, only that their composition and subsequent identity does not include sophisticated technologies. Part of the mission of cyborg semiotics is to understand the ways that the combinations, recombinations, and integrations of organic and machinic components interfact to create meaning within a culture. Some, such as Gyu Han Kang, argue against the equivalency of technology and human within a cultural structure, claiming that machines must remain subordinate to humans. He argues, “the mechanism is established by men and that human viewpoints have, therefore, been projected onto the working principles of the machines. In this sense, machines by themselves cannot transcend the boundary of human perspectives, however highly advanced they may be” (Kang 2009, 188). Unfortunately, Kang has missed the point: if machines are incapable of transcending the limits of human perspectives, humans are reciprocally incapable of transcending the capabilities of our technologies, which ultimately define us (though, as we shall see later, redefining a cyborg is possible). All cultures (and subcultures) have technologies that form the substrata of their cybernetic identities. By implementing Clark’s definition

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of the cyborg as a body or bodies that have rendered a technology or group of technologies as transparent, we can then examine how a cy-syst defines these successful combinations. Cybernetic identities, regardless of either their geographic or temporal location, can readily be ascertained, analyzed, compared, and challenged. This work need not be limited to formal cy-systs such as governments, businesses, or religious institutions; informal cy-systs such as families, social groups, and fandoms may also be equitably scrutinized in a profitable manner. The goals of cyborg semiotics, which this text initiates but does not finalize, closely mirror those Saussure envisioned for linguistics (de Saussure 1986, 6). First, it creates a matrix that will not only enable describing any cysyst, but also track and record their origins and evolution. As with the study of linguistics, cyborg semiotics will be able to track the history of not only individual cy-systs, but families of related cy-systs, much like languages are grouped into families such as Romance, Sino-Tibetan, Tanoan, and so on, and try to identify and analyze the “parent” cy-syst and the relationships between their descendants. It will also examine those formative forces that shape the composition and structure of the cy-syst, both internal and external, and the driving mechanisms that encourage growth and resistant forces that eventually cause them to collapse. Finally, it will define itself as a unique field of study, creating permeable borders that will separate it from other disciplines such as linguistics, sociology, psychology, and anthropology. It shares common objects of study and borrows (steals) unhesitatingly from these other areas, but it must define itself as unique from them. Once this field is established, practical applications of its principles are numerous and diverse. Most readily, if people are constantly interpreting and bestowing meaning upon entities created by interfactions between organisms and technologies, then understanding how those rules function to create meaning may not only allow us to increase clarity within our communicative acts, but also avoid interpretative acts based in cultural prejudice originating from the rules created by individual cy-systs. We may even come to understand the nature of prejudice itself more clearly by moving past exclusively spoken language to the cy-systs themselves with which language has a reciprocal relationship. Knowing how prescriptions against certain formations of bodies and technologies are formed offers the prospect to form alternative means of resisting and dismantling these barriers that may not have been previously considered. The sheer quantity of opportunities of this discipline are vast, as technology pervades every aspect of our lives; we interfact with countless technologies daily, many of them overlapping, and each of them forming a part of our cybernetic signification. For example, I am currently typing on a relatively new laptop (itself composed of countless technologies), which is sitting on my desk as I sit on an office chair I received for Christmas, reading

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source material from a book through my glasses, wearing clothing, listening to music through my iPhone, and have a TENS unit vibrating muscles in my neck and shoulder. While all of these technologies are doing things, they would also be interpreted as a part of my cybernetic self by anyone who observed me. Each interfaction may be considered a part of an utterance, la parole, that is decoded and assigned meaning by observers, and the unique combinations of each with my body may also be construed as an utterance. As with individual languages, meaning is assigned according to the rules of the cy-syst the observer functions within. Usually, their interpretations would not necessitate conscious analysis on their part, any more than spoken or written language is usually consciously analyzed; it is merely quickly interpreted and responded to (though analysis is, of course, possible). The reflexive construction of meaning dictates what is an appropriate cyborg within a cy-syst and which are unsuitable, unethical, immoral, blasphemous, or require disciplinary measures, including rejection, isolation, expulsion, or eradication. For example, Susan Zaeske discusses how women were forbidden to speak publicly to “promiscuous audiences,” that is, those comprised of male and female bodies. The technologies of public speaking (pulpit, notes, elevated platform) combined with the organic components of a female body using them and a group of bodies of both male and female genders would be considered by the average observer of the time as improper (Zaeske 2010, 234). Such a “woman was neither moral, delicate, nor charming” (Zaeske 2010, 239). Their behavior would certainly result in shunning (rejection) and could result imprisonment (isolation). The cyborg formed by this interfaction would be the equivalent of a blasphemous word, requiring discipline to prevent its repetition. Defining an interfaction is not a simple task and requires consideration of multiple factors. First, some sort of technology (human created object) must be present, as must at least one organic entity that participates in the interfaction. The interfaction’s observers’ understanding and assessment of both the body and the technology(s) involved must also be considered, as must the translucence of the interfaction. Rhetorically, the audience is always part of the transmission of information. With language, audience members do not always participate in linguistic creation; they are often passive receptors. In spoken language, the receptive function is the result of the auditory impression created by sound waves reverberating on the ear drums, while with written language it is the reflection of light waves in varying patterns on the cornea (although Saussure still refers to this impression as a sound image). The physicality of the interfaction must be considered separate from the social understanding of the cyborg created by the interfaction, much like the relevance of the particulars of the pitch of a sound (outside of inflected languages) or the shape of a letter is not relevant to the meaning of a word.

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The physicality of the interfaction must be isolated from its interpretation within a cy-syst. In addition to the physicality of an interfaction, its temporality must be factored in as well to understand the resultant cyborg. Interfactions transpire not only within the present of a cy-syst, but also evoke the weight of the cy-syst’s history. Cy-systs are constantly evolving and adapting in response to both internal and external forces, reshaping and remanufacturing themselves as organic and machinic components are integrated, discarded, re-formed, and repurposed. Cy-systs evolve internally as technologies and individuals that previously never interfacted intersect and collide, struggling for supremacy, structure, and connectivity. When technologies initially interfact with organic components, the resulting confrontation is almost always violent since the lack of previous interfactions means that the technologies will still be opaque to users; the initial interfactions will likely therefore be frequently misunderstood, mistranslated, and derided as flawed as they work toward transparency and eventual cyborg identity. As the interfaction becomes more commonplace, it will settle into a recognizable and translatable pattern that will have a ripple effect (or perhaps send shockwaves) through the entire cy-syst. These cascading impacts will be virtually unpredictable in their consequences, altering multiple schemas by virtue of changing one. For example, I coached middle school rugby during my PhD program. One of the teams we played against had two girls on their team. A few of the young men on my team looked at me in pained confusion, and one of them asked, “What do we do if one of them gets the ball? Do we just tackle them?” I grinned at him and said, “You better, or she’ll blow you up!” Sure enough, about ten minutes into the game, one of the young ladies got the ball coming down our sideline, and the boy who asked the question attempted half-heartedly to grab at her, arms fully extended away from his body so that he wouldn’t have to touch her with anything more than his hands. She came straight at him, planted her left hand firmly in his chest, and sent him sprawling, taking the edge for a long gain. He sat on the ground for a long moment, stunned-bunny blinking, before clambering to his feet and tearing after her. A few minutes later, they encountered each other again in the middle of the pitch, and this time, he planted his shoulder firmly in her hip, taking her to the ground. His evaluation of the capabilities of a female body to participate in the signification of “rugby player” (bodies, rugby ball, pitch, scrum cap, rugby apparel, etc.) had changed due to this interfaction. However, this would also have a ripple effect on his ability to see other female bodies interfacting with these technologies signifying in new ways outside of his prior preconceptions, especially since this change occurred when he was relatively young. His acceptance of this new signification opened opportunities to accept other transformative significations for interfactions involving female bodies. He

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could also now envision female bodies interfacting with other technologies previously regarded as participating exclusively in interfactions with male bodies; this single moment allowed him to revise his perspective on how meaning may be formed. Interfactions between cy-systs can force evolutionary, regressive, or modified transformations within the cy-systs involved, much in the same way that languages colliding in a liminal space may change both or lead to new language altogether. Attempting to delimit where (or even when) one cy-syst begins and an adjacent one ends can be nearly impossible, especially in the modern era with the rapidity of technological conversion and progression. As soon as one settles upon the contours of a cy-syst, a new interfaction transpires, revealing the dependence of the cy-syst on an unrecognized element previously considered external. The novel element requires a new inquiry into both the prerequisite composition of the cy-syst as well as its functionality since the previous understanding is no longer sufficient to define existing cyborgs. In Posthuman Metamorphosis: Narrative and Systems, Bruce Clarke comments on the challenges of precisely defining a system’s shape due to the geometric expansion of difference arising from a single observation: Systems observe by marking distinctions and crossing over between marked and unmarked states. The marking of a distinction produces the following elements, collectively referred to as “the form”: • • • •

the indication, the marked state: “the inside the distinction” the indication’s exterior, the unmarked state: “the outside of the distinction” the distinction itself as the unity of marked and unmarked states a second distinction between marked and unmarked states

A single act of distinction always already produces another distinction from which an infinite series of distinctions can ramify—and conversely, a complex of systemic distinctions can often be collapsed back into (the multiplicity of) a single observation. (Clarke 2008, 66–67)

Inside-of and outside-of the system are marked by a nearly infinite set of distinctions, almost all of which are selected arbitrarily. Within a cy-syst, these distinctions may be made system wide or with individual components. For example, Londa Schiebinger notes that the defining characteristic for the organic components of cyborgs defined linguistically as “mammals” is the possession of mammary glands, which in half the species are vestigial at best (Schiebinger 2000, 11–12). Also, for a variety of reasons, these glands are sometimes removed through injury, illness, or preference by those who may initially possess them. Would this lack mark those who lack them as outside-of the system because of their failure to meet the precise definition?

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Attempting to “fix” a system (a cy-syst in this case) into a rigid contour is not only impossible, but counterproductive. Krista Ratcliffe offers an alternative in “Bathsheba’s Dilemma” that I believe to be productive and will touch on briefly. Ratcliffe invokes Barthes’s concept of the play of the signifier to deconstruct Burkes’s monolithic concept of language, especially as it relates to the exclusion of female voices and genderblindness. This combination permits interpretive possibilities for women’s voice previously unavailable within the phallogocentric rhetorical tradition. However, “[t]his resulting rhetorical function resembles the particle/wave theory of light in quantum physics: that is, a person’s stance, like an electron’s position, can be noted, or the continual play of the signifier, like an electron’s motion, can be noted; however, like position and motion, stance and play cannot be observed simultaneously” (Ratcliffe 2010, 88). A particular cyborg may be observed and defined within a cy-syst or its evolution of signification may be tracked, but as soon as one is performed, doing the other with any degree of accuracy is impossible. The structures that create cy-systs, the forces that change them, their positions, their evolutions, and their trajectories all fall under the purveyance of cyborg semiotics and are able to be and worthy of analysis within this discipline. Saussure claims language is marked by three elements and two owners: “It is at the same time physical, physiological and psychological. It belongs both to the individual and society” (de Saussure 1986, 10). Cy-systs have the same tripartite composition and dual ownership. Physically, there is always a tangible physical connection between a technological and an organic component, even with the most advanced technology. This physicality may occur at the subatomic level and/or it may be invisible, but some type of physical interaction between a body and a technology still exists. The physiological component means that interfaction must involve the use of a part of a body, such as an appendage (arm, fingers, legs, etc.), to create a direct the physical connection with the technology, or conversely, they may utilize a more complex interface to create an indirect link with the technology, such as wiring the nervous system to connect wirelessly to the web or Bluetooth connectivity. One person who has taken this radical-seeming step is Professor Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading in England. Dr. Warwick grafted wireless technology into his body that allows him to open doors on campus or operate robotic arms using only his thoughts about impetus, which seems, on the surface, to circumvent the prerequisite for a physical connection. However, his thoughts still create an electrical current that triggers a physical action within his hardware. Without the physicality of the electrical current initiated by the thought, there is no interfaction creating the connection between the body and the technology to form a cyborg. Dr. Warwick could stare at a sliding glass door until the zombie apocalypse overruns his office,

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but without the physicality of the electrical current originating from his physiological brain and its resultant signal that triggers a physical response in the door’s mechanism, no interfaction will take place. This is due to the final part of Saussure’s trio: psychological interactions. Unless there is an observable interaction between a body and a technology, there’s no interfaction, since psychologically there will be no connection between the body and the technology on the part of the observer. For example, if someone approaches a door on the of the University of Reading and it opens as she arrives with Dr. Warwick right behind her, but she is unaware of Dr. Warwick’s enhanced connectivity, she will not interpret him to be intimately connected with the door’s technology; she will likely assume it is just on a sensor. However, if she’s aware of his capabilities, then she will regard him as linked to the door’s technology, considering them as a connected entity. Much like letters must be observed to be linked to other letters to form a word, so to must the observer consider bodies and technologies to be connected to create meaning. Saussure also identifies language as belonging to both the individual and society. In terms of a cy-syst, the individual element takes place when a specific organic unit utilizes a specific technology(s). As they use more and more technologies, they create a unique matrix of technologies that signify with their body. Everyone has a distinctive combination of technologies that are associated specifically with their bodies and no other, as recognizable as a fingerprint or a snowflake. Much like fingerprints or snowflakes, at first, they appear to be identical to every other fingerprint or snowflake: undistinguished and generic. It is not until individuals are examined closely that their uniqueness shines through. Each fingerprint has its own distinct patterns of ridges and furrows, while the needles, plates, and dendrites of snowflakes form frozen, geometric, crystalline art. In the same manner, every individual joins with their own particular set of technologies, creating a cyborg that like any other, is unlike any other. While people may look at a dentist or artist and think Okay, these are the technologies that form them, the particularities of each technology in combination with that particular body and the near infinite combinations will allow them to signify as such as the generic cyborg while still maintaining distinctiveness. Like fingerprints and snowflakes, cyborgs (and dentists) rely upon systems to create the conditions within which they signify. Fingerprints (usually) require a hand, a finger, all of which are created by DNA, while a snowflake needs a specific combination of temperature, moisture, and barometric pressure to form. Likewise, specific social structures and manufacturing facilities are needed to generate both the raw materials to form a cyborg as well as interpretive paradigms to give them meaning. An argument could be made that the structures that permit the creation of cy-systs are artificial as opposed to an intrinsic part of the cyborg condition,

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and as such, are an inadvertent selection of expression. Saussure analyzes the arguments made by Whitney that the vocal apparatus was only coincidentally selected as the means for communicating ideas (instead of another methodology, such as gestures) as opposed to an evolved characteristic designed for the express purpose of communicating ideas (10). He concludes that language is at a minimum partially a result of natural selection but is established through social convention. However, he does argue that what comes naturally to humans is the construction of language itself, regardless of its methodology, and not its verbal articulation, which is a matter of evolutionary convenience. Technology’s relationship to humanity is just as natural as that of language, as are the systems that support expression through the creation of cyborgs; in fact, I would argue that signifying through technology is just as natural as signifying through language (and perhaps even related to the evolution of language). In The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution, archaeologist Timothy Taylor describes the impact technology exerted on evolution’s course. Taylor asserts that the composition of the human body would be drastically different were it not for the influence of technology, claiming that “[h]uman life as we know it assumes the presence of artifice—objects we have made ourselves, without which life would either have no meaning or be physically impossible. Not only did we make these necessary objects, but, within a framework of some two or three million years, the objects have physically and mentally shaped us” (Taylor 2014, 6). The relationship between humanity and technology is reciprocal; just as we created it and shaped it, it has shaped us. Taylor continues, noting that basic physiological formations such as head shape and body type evolved directly from technological innovations. If a primal ancestor had selected a different technology to fulfill a need, either practical or signifying, human biology could have evolved in a radically different manner. For example, had an ancestor chosen to place protection on not only her feet but also her hands for the purposes of easier locomotion on both four and two limbs, human biology might have more closely resembled apes than modern humans. Technology, then, is just as critical as biological influences for the body’s evolution. Without technology, the course of human physiology could have taken a radically difference course. As such, it must be understood as intrinsic to the signifier “human” as bipedalism, breathing air, or a heart beating, if not more so; after all, all of these may be replaced with technological intervention while still being understood as human, while removing all forms of technology would leave something more closely resembling an earlier primate than a modern human. Evolution selected the vocal apparatus for communicating language; on a parallel course (or perhaps one interconnected with the vocal apparatus), the brain was selected to maximize the incorporation of

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technology. Clark argues that the brain’s strongest function is maximizing technological integration, creating a natural hardwired system: What the human brain is best at is learning to be a team player in a problem-solving field populated by an incredible variety of nonbiological props, scaffoldings, instruments, and resources. In this way ours are essentially the brains of natural-born cyborgs, ever-eager to dovetail their activity to the increasingly complex technological envelopes in which they develop, mature, and operate. (Clark 2003, 26)

Like language, the cyborg condition is scaffolded into the human brain; this structure not only permits the easy integration of technology into identity, but also requires it. Without technologies, the naked primate will scramble about, seeking tools to try to accomplish the most basic of tasks. While Saussure claims that the vocal apparatus is the natural executor of the linguistic function (a claim later disputed by Jacques Derrida), the cyborg state has no singular physiological component to execute the cyborg function that is coordinated by the brain. Some might suggest that human hands are the logical body part to serve as the facilitator of technological interaction (after all, opposable thumbs!), but too many other anatomical components are in constant interaction with technology to presume that hands are the designated interface for technology: feet press on gas pedals, torsos support baby slings, heads are covered by hats, Bluetooth devices fit smoothly into ears, even genitals utilize birth control. Even though hands might be optimized for such interaction (in much the same way that the vocal structures have become optimized for spoken language), they are certainly not the only method of interfacting with technology. Because of the brain’s constant quest for technological connectivity and its flexibility in finding methods for doing so, the human body in toto must be considered the executor of the cyborg function. With language, this physiological function forms a circuit with the psychological and physical attributes. The circuit’s initial step (or middle step, or last step) is initiated when the brain recognizes a sound pattern stored in memory; this is the psychological component. A physiological response is then triggered when the brain transmits the requisite information to the vocal apparatus to transmit a reply. Finally, the physical vibrations created by the movement of the vocal apparatus (vocal cords, lips, teeth, tongue, etc.) travel via sound waves across the intervening space between the speaker and the hearer, reverberating upon the hearer’s eardrums, completing and reinitiating the circuit. The establishment of this circuit has permitted the transmittal of information from one individual to another in a relatively accurate manner for millennia.

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The circuit of language parallels the formative interfactions within a cy-syst. The first step is the observation of technology(ies) interfacting with a body(s) in a recognizable pattern to create a cyborg. This is usually a visual observation, much like language is typically registered either via sound for spoken word or optically for written language; however, auditory or even kinesthetic scrutiny may yield comparable results for registering an interfaction in certain situations. This observation is the psychological component of the circuit. The brain then sends signals to the body to initiate interfactions of their own with technology; the transmission of these signals to the necessary body parts required for the interfaction and their subsequent movements represent the physical component of the circuit. Finally, physical connectivity is initiated between the body and the technology, mirroring the circuit of language. Clark describes humans’ cognition as a creation of the circuit between “material brains, material bodies, and complex cultural and technological environments. We create these supportive environments, but they create us too. We exist, as the thinking things we are, only thanks to a baffling dance of brains, bodies, and cultural and technological scaffolding” (Clark 2003, 11). Clark’s description echoes Saussure’s: material brains/psychological, material bodies/physiological, and technological environments/physical. The cultural environment is the cy-syst within that not only allows the creation of technologies but also shapes how we interpret the interfations that create cyborgs. This circuit allows meaning to be created, and these meanings in turn create us. Meaning, though, must be understood as a separate entity from that which indicates meaning. Saussure clearly makes this distinction in language between sounds and the meaning indicated by those sounds, stating “the sound patterns of the words are not to be confused with actual sounds. The word patterns are psychological, just as the concepts associated with them are” (de Saussure 1986, 12). Like the sound patterns of words, the observation of construct patterns is psychological rather than physical. Simone de Beauvoir notes some of the interfactions which form the basis for psychological pattern of the cyborg identified linguistically by the word housewife: “Few tasks are more similar to the torment of Sisyphus than those of the housewife; day after day, one must wash dishes, dust furniture, mend clothes that will be dirty, dusty, and torn again” (de Bouvoir 2011, 474). The plight of the housewife is described through her technological interfactions, and she is both bound to and defined by them: washing dishes (dirty dishes, soap, scrub brush, sink), dusting (furniture, shelves, rag, furniture polish), and mending (needle, thread, thimble, cloth, scissors, sewing machine). The cy-syst of twentieth-century western Europe viewed these interfactions as well as those with other cyborgs (such as the one defined by the word husband, for example, or the ones defined by the word children) as essential to forming

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housewife; without these interfactions, the meaning of the cyborg housewife would be a null set. While other interfactions would undoubtedly replace those occupying the current set, there would be a different composition of components. As with any cyborg, housewife must be understood as a set of specific interfactions between an individual body, defined technologies, and the relationship between that cyborg and other cyborgs. In order to be regarded as a unique cyborg, delimited from other cyborgs within a cy-syst, housewife’s observed composition of bodies, technologies, and relationships must be distinct from others within that cy-syst to the point that it should not be mistaken for any other configuration. And yet many other cyborgs within the system will share similar bodies, technologies, and relationships; there will be overlap and redundancy, which can make proper identification challenging. The social compact allows individuals to create an approximate meaning from sound images; these are not precise, as shall be demonstrated at length in later chapters. Saussure notes that with language, the physical characteristics of the circuit can be disregarded within the social compact of linguistic creation; that is, reverberations upon the air are unintelligible without comprehension of the social compact that gives those sound waves meaning. Likewise, the observation of particular bodies interfacting with particular technologies does not render meaning unless the observer (the equivalent of the listener for spoken language or reader for written language) is familiar with the rules for making meaning for those bodies and technologies. As previously noted, Susan Zaeske observes that in early nineteenth-century America, women were forbidden to speak to “promiscuous audiences”; that is, audiences comprised of both men and women (Zaeske 2010, 234). To an observer completely unfamiliar with the social compact of how to make meaning of a female body interfacting with the technologies of public speaking (stage, lectern, etc.) in conjunction with other cyborgs in the audience, this combination would make little sense; they are merely a jumble of bodies and technologies that happen to be near one another, like random sounds in spoken language. To one associated only with our modern social compact for assigning meaning, such a combination would have more meaning than simply arbitrary bodies and technologies but would not carry the ramifications of the forbidden or immoral that it did within its own temporal space; instead, the observer would likely assign it meaning disconnected from its originating social compact. The architectures of bodies and technologies forming a construct do not carry an “intrinsic” or “natural” meaning; instead, each individual draws upon those standard meanings carved into their understanding by their cy-systs. As Saussure notes with language, it is this commonality that allows language to be accessible to individuals:

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The individual’s receptive and co-ordinating faculties build up a stock of imprints which turn out to be for all practical purposes the same as the next person’s. . . . If we could collect the totality of word patterns stored in all those individuals, we should have the social bond which constitutes their language. It is a fund accumulated by the members of the community through the practice of speech, a grammatical system existing potentially in every brain, or more exactly in the brains of a group of individuals; for the language is never complete in any single individual, but exists perfectly only in the collectivity. (de Saussure 1986, 13)

With cy-systs, observers build this same type of inventory of patterns, just with bodies and technologies rather than sound images. This inventory is drawn upon to attempt classification of any cyborg encountered. However, cyborgs that are readily identifiable within one cy-syst may lack corresponding identification within another; much like words, some are untranslatable. Even when translation is attempted, the lack of a corresponding pattern can lead to misidentification and misunderstandings. For example, the cyborg known by the term geisha within the Japanese cy-syst has no equivalent combination of bodies, technologies, and relationships to other cyborgs within American cy-systs. Bozena Duda correctly explains in “From Poule de Luxe to Geisha: Source Languages Behind the Present-Day English Synonyms of Prostitute” that the constituent biological and technological components of the cyborg identified by the term geisha interfact in a different manner than those of the cyborg identified by the English term prostitute; however, Duda then incorrectly attempts to maintain their equivalency despite this clear difference. In order to adequately fulfill the requirements for geisha, the female body must be able to interfact with numerous technologies traditional to this cyborg, such as tea kits, musical instruments, and games; none of these technologies are required for prostitute. They also reside together with other geisha in insular communities dedicated to reproducing their traditions, and thus, their interfactions; their housing technology and subsequent interfactions are different from those identified as prostitute. These are unique to their cy-syst, for while there are brothels and red-light districts in other cy-systs, they lack the social dignity associated with geisha quarters, the living situations, apprenticeships, and teaching of skills in relation to the technologies of the trade have no current technological equivalency in western culture. Sexual relationships with clients are not a necessary requirement for geishas as they are for prostitutes, so their interfactions with other cyborgs differ as well. Even though these relationships have marked differences in their interfactions with technologies and other cyborgs, Duda argues for equanimity between the two terms:

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Looking at all the sociological and cultural aspects of geishas it is hard to escape the impression that the conceptual link between the life of a geisha and that of a prostitute is relatively obvious: living in communities/houses—living in brothels, both financially sponsored by: patrons—clients, and, finally, both work to please their patrons—clients. This culturally embedded picture of a geisha, simplified as it is, works perfectly well for language users to employ the word geisha as a euphemism for “prostitute.” (Duda 2014, 40)

Duda is arguing for the linguistic overlap between geisha and prostitute, which, while some connotative commonality exists between the linguistic terms, the differences between the cyborgs within their unique cy-systs are immense. The technologies interfacted with, the relationships between bodies, and the governing principles that allow those bodies to interfact and be interpreted are all substantively different. By attempting to make these two cyborgs linguistically synonymous, Duda erases all of these cybernetic differences, rendering geisha as not just linguistically but cybernetically equivalent to a cy-syst not its own, and thus, subject to misinterpretation as to its interfactions. Part of the goal of cyborg semiotics is to look back on the meetings between cy-systs and analyze where these types of misinterpretations may originate. Unfortunately, such examinations are too often conducted not by those who are within the cy-syst but by external observers who try to shape the narrative according to the rules of their own cy-syst. This frequently happens when one cy-syst exerts influence over or dominates another. In Orientalism, Edward Said describes the relationship of domination exerted by the West over the East. Specifically, he engages with Flaubert’s exploits, describing a letter Flaubert penned to a friend, Louise Colet, about his amorous encounter with renowned Egyptian dancer and courtesan Kuchuk Hanem. According to Said, “After his voyage, he [Flaubert] had written Louise Colet reassuringly that ‘the oriental woman is no more than a machine: she makes no distinction between one man and another man’” (Said 1978, 186). Flaubert’s reduction of Hanem to a machine is telling, as in doing so he removes the capability for discrimination from her. Hanem is clearly not a simple automaton; she (and other women of this spatiotemporal location engaged in comparable activities) were certainly able to make judgements about whom to share their bodies with, under what circumstances, and utilizing particular technologies (incenses, clothing, physical adornments, etc.) to attract men for their own purposes (which may have differed from the traditions of those of Flaubert’s cy-syst). Because Flaubert cannot decode how a female body can interfact in the manner in which Harem did with other cyborgs with discrimination, he assumes discrimination is not indicated. However, it is not discrimination on the part of Hanem that is lacking, but rather Flaubert’s ability to decode

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her methods of discrimination from the interfaction, something one raised within that cy-syst could have performed relatively easily; Suassure notes that as children, we go through an apprenticeship with our language, mastering it over time (de Saussure 1986, 14). Flaubert lacks that background with Harem’s cy-syst to understand the rules for creating meaning in that cy-syst that would allow him to observe how certain technologies and bodies carry significance, and as such, he assumes there is none since they do not fit his preconceived notions originating within his native cy-syst. Every cy-syst has unique rules which govern it, such as Fluabert’s or Hanem’s, and understanding the rules that govern them is the basis of cyborg semiotics, just as every language has rules that dictate how meaning is attributed. Saussure ascribes a special significance to language over other social institutions, such as politics. While he acknowledges that there are other systems that express ideas (writing, social etiquette, etc.), he prioritizes spoken language as the most important of these systems, a fact which he holds as obvious but justifies neither through argument nor evidence. Like language, cyborg semiotics expresses ideas, but instead of being formed from sound images, its ideas are expressed through the intertwining of bodies and technologies. While I will not argue here that it is the most important system of expression, I do want to offer some context for considering its importance. While the physicality of the spoken or written word has limited impact on those using it (though such consequences are certainly real), the physicality of cyborg semiotics has distinct impacts on both those expressing ideas as well as those to whom they are addressed. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, women were forbidden to drive vehicles until June of 2018. This restriction relates to the imperative within that cy-syst of female bodies signifying as controlled and subject to male bodies. The physicality of this interfaction denies not only the ability to signify as independent but also the reality of being independent. Simple tasks of modern life may not be performed (or must be performed with limitations) without the ability of the body to control a motor vehicle, be it acquiring groceries, visiting a relative, or going to work. These practical consequences are a result of the mandated signification of women’s bodies. Cyborg semiotics separates what a technology does when utilized by particular body or bodies from what a technology means under the same conditions, as in the above example. While there have been other inquiries into the meaning of technologies, there has never been such a formalization of the field allowing for broad application across time, space, and culture, nor has the stark differentiation between meaning and function of bodies integrated with technologies been drawn as sharply. What technologies do is an inarguable physical fact, much like sound waves passing through the air and striking an eardrum. These actions are incontrovertible, quantifiable, and measurable. What technologies mean, however, is a variable construct, shifting according

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to time, geography, and culture. While a word may be heard through the process of sound waves striking the ear and the vibrations associated with that word remain a constant, without the cultural apprenticeship to understand what it intended to mean, it will be gibberish; similarly, observation of an interfaction without the same type of apprenticeship will result in incomprehension or miscomprehension of the resultant cyborg. Cyborg semiotics seeks to shift the focus away from what technologies and bodies do to what they mean; while one is not necessarily more important than the other, conflation of the two results can result in an attempted fixation of action when meaning may shift, preventing sociocultural, economic, and even spiritual progress. It is during this apprenticeship that we learn the structures of a given cy-syst; knowing these structures permits us to observe particulars of interfactions between bodies and technologies and understand which are “proper” and which violate the rules of the cy-syst, rendering them as meaningless, blasphemous, or poorly constructed. Understanding these rules tells us which bodies should have access to which technologies, how they should interfact with them, which bodies combined with which technologies have created cyborgs that have precedence and/or command/control functions over others, and what are the rules that govern the interfactions between cyborgs; these rules are not necessarily spelled out for us any more than the grammar of the language we speak is when we are initially learning it, but we see them demonstrated through the actions of those around us, media, and our personal experience. All of these form the foundation of cybernetic grammar, a term that will be more closely explored later in the text. A cybernetic dictionary is created during this process that is comprised of the permissible combinations of bodies and technologies. The mental cybernetic dictionary will have the “spelling” of the cyborg, such as how housewife for de Beauvoir’s cy-syst would consist of a female body and technologies such as dishes, dust rag, and needle. There will be a definition of what that cyborg is and how the body interfacts with technologies (uses the dust rag remove dust from furniture), and there will be a cybernetic “part of speech”; that is, how does this cyborg function within the cy-syst in relationship to other cyborgs? While I am not going to attempt to outline a complete taxonomy of cybernetic parts of speech here or their descriptions (this would be a complete text in its own right), a few brief examples of some possible taxonomic classifications (and these are by no means the exhaustive list) might be command and control, maintenance, reproduction, and communication. Command and control would include cyborgs who direct the signification of other cyborgs (CEOs, politicians, school administrators); they dictate that signification, enforcing their concepts of proper signification upon those beneath them in the cy-syst’s hierarchy. Maintenance includes cyborgs who preserve the physical functionality of the components of the cy-syst. These cyborgs would include

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medical professionals, sanitation engineers, and plumbers. Cyborgs that ensure the propagation of similar cyborgs within their cy-syst would be classified as reproduction. Cyborgs such as pastors, teachers, and coaches would all fit under this heading. Finally, communication would include cyborgs like advertising director, writer, and social media personalities. Much like words, these taxonomic differentiations for cybernetic “parts of speech” are not clear cut. The word red can function as a noun as in the sentence, “Red is my favorite color.” However, in sentences such as “The red quilt has a stain in the corner,” it serves as an adjective instead. In instances such as these, neither the spelling nor the basic concept has changed, merely the functionality within the sentence. Similarly, cyborgs may maintain their spelling (the same bodies and technologies) and their concepts (they are still signifying within the cy-syst in the same basic manner) but they might be utilizing different functions. For example, in certain circumstances, teacher might be fulfilling the reproduction function when she teaches lessons about history that reproduce a specific cultural understanding of a historical event or time period. On the other hand, the same cyborg might be exerting a command and control function when she instructs the children to stand in a line; of course, teaching children that an organized line is the best method to move a group of people from one location to another is itself a form of reproduction. As with language, the divisions between various functions are not neat and straightforward, but arbitrary markers that defy simple categorization. This does not mean that the same body in different circumstances and interfacting with different technologies cannot transition functionality. In the word director, for example, if the letter “dir” is replaced with the letters “el” while maintaining the letters “ector,” a different sound image is evoked for the listener. Likewise, if the body of the director remains the same, but certain technologies are exchanged (technologies associated with voting such as a voting booth replacing technologies for filmmaking), we do not observe their functionality in the same manner. Whereas elector might be considered under a reproductive function, director might be considered under a function such as aesthetic (though like many other cyborgs, functions such as reproductive could also be ascribed to director). Shifting the spelling can alter the observation pattern (the cyborg equivalent of the linguistic sound image) to the point that the functionality within the cy-syst is no longer the same. A change in cybernetic spelling does not have to indicate a change in functionality within the cy-syst, however. For example, English words “teacher” and “preacher” share the letters e-a-c-h-e-r in the same order, exchanging only the letter “t” for the letters “pr.” Likewise, the body and technologies of a cyborg forming the observation pattern recognized as teacher can alter a few technological components, retaining many of them, while also still maintaining the same body, yet altering the observation pattern to the point that it is

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now instead recognizable as preacher. A body that works in a classroom during the week uses technologies related to speaking, presentation, and memory (notes, projectors, books, etc.). These same types are technologies are used by bodies that lead religious services with only minor differences (cultural/ political iconography exchanged for religious iconography, alterations to the seating arrangement, slightly different bodies in the audience). However, even when these technologies are exchanged, they still function in a reproductive manner. One attempts to reproduce academic (and inescapably sociocultural) knowledge and beliefs, while the other reproduces spiritual understanding and practices. Just like “teacher” and “preacher” remain nouns with a small alteration in spelling, teacher and preacher retain their reproductive function when the body remains the same but some technologies have shifted, though as we saw in the prior example of director and elector, such maintenance of functionality is not essential for a body when technologies change. These functions of a cy-syst can be classified as internal to the system, much like verbs and nouns as parts of speech may be considered as internal to linguistic system. However, there are elements relating to linguistic systems that are external to the system itself, at least according to Saussure. For example, he argues that the ethnology, political history, institutional affiliations (churches, schools, etc.) and geography all external to the system itself (de Saussure 1986, 21–22). He neither diminishes these external factors nor dismisses the importance of their study; he simply maintains that they are not part of the study of the system itself. He acknowledges, “There are all the relations which may exist between the history of a language and the history of a race or civilisation. The two histories intermingle and are related to another. . . . A nation’s way of life has an effect upon its language. At the same time, it is in great part the language which makes the nation” (de Saussure 1986, 21). The reciprocation between a linguistic system and a nation is evident, but I would argue that the bond between a cy-syst and a country is even stronger. Whereas the physical element of a language is sound upon air or ink on a page or pixels on a screen, the physical embodiment of a cy-syst is manufactured and enforced upon bodies, granting and denying access to identities and expression. Language has power, but it lacks the raw physicality possessed by cy-systs in expressing meaning (though language clearly has a tremendous impact upon expression). Saussure argues that political history is likewise external to the linguistic system. At first, it would seem like making a comparable claim for cy-systs would be absurd. Technologies are used to fight wars, enforce laws, colonize other countries, and transmit propaganda. These usages alone would seemingly prevent a separation between internal and external elements of the cysyst. However, if we return to one of the principles of cyborg semiotics—there

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is a difference between what a technology does (a physical act) and what a technology means (a signifying act), understanding how the political history is external to the cy-syst becomes much easier to identify. If the object of study was the results of utilization of these technologies, then the political history would indeed be inseparable. However, since the object of study is the meaning of cyborgs, it becomes a relatively simple matter to disengage political history from meaning, since the meaning of the cyborgs is variable depending on which cy-syst they are functioning within. Much like political history, institutional affiliations would also seem to be a part of the internal functioning of the cy-systs they shape. After all, these institutions shape both the forms and functions of the technologies as well as how they interact with the bodies under their jurisdictions. However, as with political history, it is not about what these technologies do in conjunction with bodies that is internal to the system, but what they mean. As such, these institutional affiliations must likewise be divorced from the internal structure of the cy-syst. At best, one might claim that these systems are regulatory to reproduce the meanings of the cyborgs within the cy-syst, but such regulatory bodies are designed to shape the system, much like a dictionary serves as a system of reproduction; it is not the system itself. Saussure takes great care to form distinctions between factors that are internal and external to linguistic systems. In the first of his chess analogies, he notes that the fact that the game comes from Persia is external to the system of the game. In fact, one could substitute pieces made of ivory for pieces carved from wood and the “grammar” of the game would remain intact; one could even substitute bottle caps, thimbles, and dog food kibbles and still have a functioning game as long as the players agreed upon the meaning of those pieces. However, should one change the way in which a piece moves, the number of pieces, or the manner in which a piece captures another, the internal grammar of the game has been altered and must be regarded as something different than it was before. With cy-systs, this separation becomes a trickier proposition because the grammar of the cyborgs is premised in obvious physicality in a way that language simply is not. This acknowledgement neither diminishes nor minimizes the necessity of the physical component of the language circuit; it merely recognizes that with cy-systs the overt physicality of the structures that form the cyborgs within the system make distinguishing between internal and external factors a significantly more difficult proposition. To redirect Saussure’s chess analogy, it as if the chess pieces were autonomous and capable of different moves and captures depending upon their materials. This is not to say that there is not a useful distinction to be made between elements that are internal and external to the system. There will be studies in which it will be useful to make such distinctions, especially those that

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are focused exclusively on current signification. However, I believe that the most useful implementation of this discipline will be to reveal how external factors have forced cyborgs within a given cy-syst to conform to certain significations against their desires to create alternative meanings. This will almost always be related to questions of power, oppression, and enforced separations, classifications, and abuses. Reducing the external to a scholarly afterthought diminishes the power of this discipline to create positive social change through academic disinterest. As such, I would caution future scholars against using this distinction too rigorously in future research. Just as there are factors considered internal and external to a given system, the formal operation of a system must be considered in relation to its informal functionality. One example of this might be a hospital. In a hospital, there is a table of operations that provides a formal organizational structure. Underneath the hospital administrator who has overall responsibility for the functionality of the medical institution are a variety of department heads (nursing, surgery, human resources, administration, etc.), each of whom has numerous personnel reporting to them. The amount of personnel in each position is allocated by an organizational chart according to the needs of that particular facility, determined by factors such as population density, history of various illnesses in the region, anticipated growth, and so forth. In addition to personnel, the administrator is responsible for a variety of equipment, both transitory (gloves, cotton swabs, bandages, etc.) and enduring (MRI machines, surgical lasers, ambulances, etc.). In the formal structure of the hospital, there will be certain number of personnel in the nursing department, a certain number of gloves allotted to the cancer ward, and a certain number of ambulances in the emergency bay; however, as any hospital administrator knows, maintaining both personnel and supplies at an adequate level is an ongoing challenge, especially during times of a pandemic such as the polio pandemic of 1955 or the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. PPE supplies run out, equipment breaks down, ambulances have accidents, and employees contract diseases themselves, leaving insufficient personnel to cover necessary medical treatment. An administrator who expected everything to always be functioning in an idealized state would be regarded as unrealistic and naïve. The formal system often does not reflect the actual functioning of the system itself (in fact, it almost never does so), much like the formal system of a language is almost never the system used outside of certain “sterile” linguistic environments, such as academia or certain forms of literature (and let us face facts; even in these types of highly structured environments we see composers rebel against overly formal language). “Perfect” language, such as Edited American English (EAE) is a utopian fantasy that is heavily imbricated with power and control over minority groups; like a utopia (a word that literally means “nowhere”) such an ideal

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is not only unobtainable, but usually undesirable, as utilizing such language would eliminate both diversity and growth within the system. We see, for example, the erasure of women that EAE participated in for centuries through the usage of the masculine pronoun “he” as a catch-all term for any singular individual of unknown gender. Attempting to retain all aspects of a formalized linguistic system would prevent it from adapting to new understandings of equity. This is a battle still being waged and the quest for a new singular pronoun is still contentious, though the use of “they” as an option has recently been accepted in both Chicago Manual Style and the Associated Press style book as a feasible option. Unfortunately, there is still a controversy over this shift from linguistic purists and traditionalists who either insist that a nongendered “he” is simply part of the language and people understand what is intended by its use or that “they” simply will not work in the singular since it describes a plural group (this second argument, of course, ignores the etymological history of “they” being used as a singular pronoun). In a comparable manner, women have often been technologically erased from various spaces. The so-called executive washroom of corporate America was a single restroom and was always equipped with a urinal for men and lacked technologies for women, such as a tampon dispenser. This is not to say that men have not been technologically erased from adequate technologies to achieve certain tasks in certain spaces. When I was out with my infant children, I frequently had to change diapers on a sink counter because the bathroom was not equipped with a baby changing station (something I see significantly more often now that my children are grown); however, this was because it was assumed that no self-respecting man would stoop to doing a woman’s work of child rearing. The informal systems of the past in which the minority of women requiring an executive washroom and men who wanted to actively parent their children eventually led to reforms in these spaces, permitting them to not only take advantage of what these technologies could do, but what they as cyborgs could mean when utilizing them. Like political history and institutions, geography plays a role external to cy-systs, and like these other factors, it initially seems like it should be considered internal. Numerous technologies are created only because the physical rigors of a geographic region require human innovation for people to successfully reside within it. The harsh tundra of regions such as the Yukon and Siberia led to the development of snowshoes and snowmobiles, while the suffocating heat of Africa and the American South and the African deserts prompted the creation of fans and air conditioning. Geography has always required human adaptation, usually through technological interventions, though bodily characteristics such as differentiations in skin color may also arise as a result of geographic influence. Even though technologies come into being to allow humans to reside in a specific locale, the geography

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itself remains external to the cy-syst. Snowshoes might allow an individual to walk of snow, but what does a given body wearing those snowshoes mean to people who live there? Does a female body wearing them mean something different than a male body? Is a white body traipsing across a desert landscape in the Middle East regarded differently than an indigenous one? While geography shapes what bodies can do with a technology as well as which technologies are created, what a given body means while using them is a separate consideration; as such, geography must also be considered as an external factor for a cy-syst.

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Structures in Cyborg Semiotics

While all of these factors are considered external to both linguistic systems and cy-systs, Saussure acknowledges that the field of phonetics falls directly under the internal characteristics. Saussure discriminates between historical phonetics (the “true” phonetics, according to his tracing of the etymology of the term) that studies the evolution of sounds and physiological phonetics that takes as its object of study the physiology of sounds (de Saussure 1986, 32). Saussure rightly points out that linguists were for centuries held captive by the letter formations that comprised a word, unable to dissociate it from the sound produced by the physiology of speaking. However, physiological phonetics is not directly connected to the letters on a page, as letters may have multiple sounds associated with them and that may be altered by sequence or proximity to other letters. There are few “rules” to speaking words as written on a page; they exist more as general guidelines. Jean Baudrillard argues against phonetic equivalency in technology, claiming that [w]hereas a rolled r in contrast to a uvular r changes nothing so far as the linguistic system is concerned—in other words, the connoted meaning has absolutely no retroactive effect on the denoted structures—the connotation of an object may for its part may bring great weight to bear upon technical structures, and alter them significantly. For technology, unlike language, does not constitute a stable system. Unlike monemes and phonemes, technemes are constantly evolving. (Baudrillard 2005, 8)

This argument is one of the more common ones brought against a system of signification for technology. This argument has two inherent flaws in it. The first is that language is a stable system. Language is in a constant state of flux, adding words, changing sounds, and adding new meanings to existing words. While such change might take place at a slower rate than that of technology (though this is certainly not always the case), change in linguistics is just as inexorable as that of technology. Linguistic change can also happen 43

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exceptionally rapidly, especially in the current era of perpetually invasive social media with information, language, and images being shared at a rapid rate. New terminology can spread quickly, usually among a smaller group initially before disseminating to the population at large. In fact, not only does language usually evolve from these smaller groups to the general population, but it can also fracture along fault lines such as race, geography, and generations, with certain groups maintaining control over a term in relative isolation. Also, just because a system is in a state of perpetual flux does not mean that it is not a system; in fact, Baudrillard’s own statement that “technemes are constantly evolving” implies the existence of a system with rules governing that evolution. Baudrillard’s second error is separating the meaning of a technology from the bodies with which they interfact. I do not disagree with him that technology thus detached from a body lacks meaning, but making that connection should not be a difficult move. He has made the fallacy of composition, mistaking the traits of the part for the traits of the whole: meaning cannot be ascribed to technologies (the part), but it can be attributed to cyborgs (the whole). Additionally, he goes on to argue about connotations of the technology being inseparable from their meaning, mentioning exactly the types of external factors that Saussure warned about placing internally to the system: “mastery of the world and satisfaction of needs” (Baudrillard 2005, 8). Mastery of the world would include political history and institutions, while satisfaction of needs would fall under geography. These are external factors that shape the composition of the system, but they are not the system itself. While these are areas that are worthy of study, they are external to the system. Marking these traits as external to the system, as Suassure did so eloquently, leaves us with an easily discriminated system to study. Baudrillard also attempts to make the argument “the technological system is so closely implicated, by reason of its state of permanent revolution, in the very time of the practical objects that ‘speak’ it (much the same is true for language, but to a vastly lesser degree)” (Baudrillard 2005, 8), and as such, it cannot be described scientifically without consideration of these external influences. He states that “the description of the system of objects cannot be divorced from a critique of that system’s practical ideology” (Baudrillard 2005, 9). Again, he is conflating what a technology means with what it does, especially when he brings in the factor of time. As previously discussed, when looking at an object either its position or its movement can be studied; both cannot be observed simultaneously. As soon as the focus is placed upon the movement of the object rather than its position, the position is lost. Baudrillard’s contention is that because the movement of technological transformation is so swift, or at least so rapid in comparison to language, its position (structures) cannot be studied. This claim is absurd; while it does make

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the study of the position of the meaning of cyborgs more challenging than that of words in language, it also makes it a very rich field to explore as its constant shifts and growths create unique challenges and opportunities for a deeper understanding of how we transmit meaning. Also, the sheer amount of configurations of bodies and technologies, while staggering in their complexity and quantity, also means this is a vibrant field that will constantly require renewed study to keep up with its intricacies. As I stated previously, the study of external forces upon the creation of cy-systs is worthwhile and valuable; however, just because there are external forces that shape the systems does not mean that the internal system itself cannot be studied. A car may be created by a factory in Mexico with parts made in Japan and sold at a dealership in Philadelphia. Studies of the supply chain that allowed the vehicle to be assembled, the economic disparity between the laborers that built it and the executives that benefited from their labor, and the environmentally harmful mining practices that accessed the ore to build the vehicle are all important, but they are external to the study of the functioning of one particular spark plug within the car’s internal combustion engine; while these are all factors that shaped that particular piece, the piece can now be examined as its own object within the automobile’s functionality. However, Baudrillard did tacitly acknowledge the existence of “technemes,” contrasting them to phonemes and monemes (or morphemes). It is at this point that he should have realized that he was contrasting a single thing to two dissimilar things. Phonemes are the smallest distinguishable units of sound within a language, while morphemes are the smallest units of meaning within a language. To which of these is he comparing a “techneme”? If we consider this from a cybernetic phonics perspective, his techneme appears to be closest to a phoneme; however, this would be mislabeled within a cybernetic system. Cyborg phonetics consist of both bodies and technologies, not technologies alone, forming sequences that evoke observed images. To call this unit a “techneme” erases bodies from the smallest observable units within a cy-syst. The English language requires, at a minimum, one vowel in a word, and in the vast majority of cases, there are several other consonants and perhaps other vowels as well. Likewise, a cyborg within a cy-syst requires at the minimum at least a single body (which without any technological engagement can barely form meaning in its own right, much like a single vowel in English) and other technological “consonants” around it. As such, to call the smallest unit of observation a techneme would essentially eliminate the cybernetic equivalent of vowels from the potential set; imagine an alphabet suddenly divested of vowels. Conversely, to apply it to the equivalent of morphemes would not only eliminate bodies from the potential set, but also render formed meanings incoherent by eliminating these bodies. Imagine reading sentences with all the vowels removed from the words; one

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could make an educated approximation at assessing the meaning, but doing so would render scattershot results. As such, I propose that cymemes be used for all cybernetic phonemes within a set; these would be comprised of the individual bodies and technologies within a cy-syst. This neologism derives from “cybernetics,” which includes both organic and machinic components. Ganmemes will reference bodies that participate in creating meaning, while technemes will reference technologies; think of these in terms of vowels and consonants, respectively. For cyborg morphemes I suggest borgmemes. As the smallest units of meaning within a cy-syst, these must consist of a minimum of one technology and one body; “borg” carries the implications of both “cyborg” as well as “organism” and “organization.” Cymemes and borgmemes form the foundational units of cyborg phonetics and undergird the formation of larger units of meaning. We can see how cymemes and borgmemes form underlying components of cyborgs with female sexuality in western culture. In Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, Ariel Levy describes the cymemes and borgmemes that allow the formation of a certain type of sexual image (though the implications and morality of this configuration may be debated). Levy claims, Making sexiness into something simple, quantifiable makes it easier to explain and to market. If you remove the human factor and make it about stuff—big fake boobs, bleached blonde hair, long nails, poles, thongs—then you can sell it. Suddenly, sex requires shopping; you need plastic surgery, peroxide, a manicure, a mall. What is really out of commercial control is you can’t bottle attraction. (Levy 2006, 184)

Levy’s statement is simultaneously insightful while either missing the point, or she is so focused on making her own point that her own insight eludes her. She initially separates bodies from technologies, identifying cymemes (female bodies, poles, peroxide, etc.). She is even correct when she talks about technologies that have a direct impact on reshaping and altering the bodies as technologies rather than bodies (big fake boobs, bleached blonde hair, long nails, etc.). A pole, for example, is simply a long, straight piece of a material such as metal (though like Saussure’s chess pieces, it may also be formed of wood, plastic, or some other material without loss to its observed qualities in most cases). As a techneme, it carries no meaning, as it is not connected with other technologies or bodies. It could be found on a bus, on a subway, or in a fire station; it would be just as suitable in any of these environments as in a strip club. In like manner, we see the letter “s” in all of these words (“bus,” “subway,” “fire station,” and “strip club”), and we know that this letter forms part of the word that signifies these sound images.

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Comparably, a pole comprises one component of the observation pattern of all of these cyborgs; it means nothing independent of other bodies and technologies. While seeing a pole may evoke a strip club in the mind of a person, in others it may bring to mind a fire house or perhaps even an Olympic sport. Poles have no cultural imperative to be connected to exotic dancing. The letter “s” has no more natural connection to the sound image for “strip club” than a pole does to the observation pattern of strip club. Does one hear the sound of the letter “s” and automatically think “strip club”? That would only transpire if the person listening was accustomed to that particular series of phonemes following the initial “s.” There is no more cause for a pole to evoke strip club unless the observer was acclimated to associating the remaining cymemes with it. Stripper would probably be the smallest borgmeme that could be associated with strip club; at the most basic level, this would consist of a body interfacting with clothes by discarding them. Familiarity with letter formations and the monemes and phonemes that form them is crucial for decoding words. Saussure describes the two manners in which this process takes place: reading words that are known and reading words that are unknown. Saussure notes that “[a] new or unknown word is scanned letter by letter. But a common, familiar word is taken in at a glance, without bothering about the individual letters: its visual shape functions like an ideogram. Here, traditional spelling has something to be said for it: for it is useful to separate tant from temps, et from est and ait” (de Saussure 1986, 34). Configurations of consonants and vowels that they have seen repeatedly do not require the reader to sound out bit by bit what the letters sound like together and then try to determine which sound image was intended. Familiarity with culturally traditional sequences, especially those that have been saturated into their lexicon, provides the reader with the ability to quickly establish individual sound images from the letters provided. Since we read cyborgs like we read written language, if a particular sequence of cymemes has been observed multiple times, the observation pattern is formed that allows the pattern to be more readily recognized in future encounters. It is not necessary to see a particular configuration of cymemes numerous times to begin to eliminate options for meaning any more than it is necessary to encounter a certain configuration of letters repeatedly to discriminate, at least to some degree, the possible meanings of that word. For example, the sequence of letters m-o-t-h has a limited number of potential meanings associated with it in the English language. This sequence eliminates the possibility of sound images contained within the sequences of b-o-o-k, t-r-a-p-e-z-e, and a-r-t-i-c-h-o-k-e. It can, however, stand as a free morpheme in its own right: moth. Additionally, combined with other phonemes, it can form words with distinctly different sound images from that of its free morpheme, such as m-a-m-m-o-t-h, s-m-o-t-h-e-r, and m-o-t-h-e-r. A reader may

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encounter difficulties when they encounter either a sequence of letters that is unfamiliar to them, or even more difficult, a sequence of letters that contain a partially familiar sequence with unfamiliar sequences around it. Drawing only on the knowledge of familiar sequences and making assumptions about what the unfamiliar sequences indicate can lead to severe misunderstandings of the sound images. For example, if a reader has only encountered the free morpheme “moth” but is unfamiliar with “mammoth,” they may assume that the latter is perhaps a matronly moth, attempting to draw on lesser used meaning derived from the phoneme sequence m-a-m, incorrectly assuming that it might be a morpheme. We can see how such sequences of cymemes and borgmemes might also relate to interpretations of women’s bodies as part of a cyborg. Returning to the technologies of women speaking publicly, women formed some of the earliest abolitionist and reform societies; however, doing so removed them from the domestic sphere, and thus, the technologies men were accustomed to forming meaning with their bodies. They were ganmemes interfacting with unfamiliar technemes, and thus creating borgmemes that, much like the incorrect interpretation of the phoneme sequence “m-a-m,” were attributed with incorrect observation patterns. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell notes that “speaking was competitive, energized by the desire to win a case or persuade others to one’s point of view. These were viewed as exclusively masculine traits related to man’s allegedly lustful, ruthless, competitive, amoral, and ambitious nature. Activities requiring such qualities were thought to ‘unsex’ women” (Campbell 2010, 13). A female body as a ganmeme was misplaced within the technemes (podium, platform, notes, etc.) and ganmemes (audience, “hype man,” reporters, etc.) of public speaking. Adding to this difficulty was the elimination of any acceptable borgmeme that could be formed with her body and these technologies. Any borgmeme or cyborg formed would only be recognizable as carrying connotations of masculinity, an undesirable (or even impossible) formation. However, much like the phonemes and morphemes of a language, the cymemes and borgmemes of a cy-syst can form countless cyborgs. Just because the sound image formed by the phonemes represented by m-a-m-m-o-t-h is unfamiliar to the reader means neither that the creature did not actually exist nor that the sound image is nonexistent within the language. At some point, the creature had to be discovered and a word had to be created to describe it. In the same manner, a woman speaking publicly who is moral, compassionate, and feminine is a possibility; one’s inability to conceptualize that body with the appropriate technologies does not preclude either the existence of such a sequence nor the ability of the cy-syst to convey such a meaning; even if a cy-syst does not currently possess such capability, like English once did not have the ability to convey “mammoth,” once a thing is recognized, it may be rendered meaningful by

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acknowledging its existence. Unless a mammoth was recognized as a real creature, language would not have created a word to permit discourse about it. As such, when encountering a new cyborg, close attention to detail should be paid to both the cymemes and borgmemes within its composition before ascribing meaning to it. While they may be similarities to other recognizable cyborgs, assuming traits belonging to those that are known to a new one comprised of different bodies and technologies, even if these differences appear on the surface to be minor, can result in incorrect assumptions and subsequent grave miscommunications. This type of miscommunication does raise the difficulty of assimilating the massive amounts of cymemes and borgmemes within a cy-syst into something resembling linguistic alphabets and basic lexicons of small units of meaning. While the number of possible sounds created within a language and represented by letters is fairly limited (forty-two to forty-four phonemes in English represented by twenty-six letters, for example) there are currently thousands of technologies residing within our cy-systs, even accounting for variables such as multitudes of brands and technological generations. And though Baudrillard was incorrect about the relative instability of technological innovation rendering technology incompatible with forming a system of meaning, he was correct that such innovation does make doing so a more challenging proposition, or at the very least more difficult to catalogue and describe both the rules governing the system and the meanings created by such rapidly evolving technologies and their interfactions with bodies. Taylor notes the obstacles that such explosive technological growth could create, providing inertia to technological innovation that may prove impossible to decelerate: We have never been wholly natural creatures, and we have evolved to be increasingly artificial. Even should we want it, escape from technology is no longer possible. It may in fact be that technology has escaped us: the inertia of the entire system of technological civilization is by now so immense that the sorts of choices left for us to make in the future are essentially trivial. (Taylor 2014, 8)

Technologies not only multiply, but they reproduce in such a way that they are branching from existing technologies. As such, the types of technologies produced are somewhat limited by the boundaries of their predecessors; while boundary breaking technologies do occur, these are significantly more difficult to market as opposed to variations on prior technologies. Creating new markets, building unique manufacturing facilities, and convincing venture capitalists to invest in the unknown are all more difficult than tweaking or adding to existing products; that is why there are currently twelve-plus Star

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Wars movies (do we really count the holiday special?) as well as other numerous interconnected television shows appearing on Disney+ within the next few years. While the volume of combinations of bodies and technologies does not preclude cy-systs from being an object of study, it does make doing so a rather complex and involved process. Additionally, with new technologies constantly arriving on the market and older technologies constantly phasing out either through planned obsolescence, decline in popularity, or attaining technological irrelevance, recording a complete and accurate cybernetic dictionary in the vein of Webster or Oxford may prove to be a nearly impossible challenge. Even more difficult than categorizing every cyborg is defining the rules that govern their interfactions. With the incessant transformations of existing cyborgs and the subsequent impact those transformations would have on each interfaction, a complete compendium of their exponential transfigurations and their results may prove impossible, at least with the current pace of such alterations. This is not to say that such a compilation may not be performed on a cy-syst that is either no longer in existence or less complex technologically and more stable. Such studies may provide a trove of wealth about the principles of how full systems currently function in miniature, much like a scale model. While they would not capture the scope of larger and more complex systems, they should provide valuable reference points that might be proportionally applied when applicable. Muri makes this point clearly, stating “Older human-machines can help us grasp the subjectivities of new ones, but they require closer attention than the cursory invocation of representative images that they have so far received” (Muri 2007, 13). Muri’s point is important, as older technologies may be considered as either less significant, less relevant, or less interconnected to the lives of those who interfacted with them. By understanding that many of the rules for understanding interfactions we currently use apply equitably to these earlier cyborgs, we can then see how these rules have played out in a smaller and less complex cy-syst, though the operating principles of the system remained the same. From there, we can infer how they not only might have scaled to current technologies, but perhaps we might also gain greater insight into where we might be going from here. One of the simplest methods of determining the values of cymemes and borgmemes is to read works that describe them from their own times. Texts such as instruction manuals would provide context not only for what these technologies do, but also for what they mean in their times, at least to some degree. However, while these texts might describe the workings of contemporaneous technologies and how people are supposed to interfact with them, works such as novels, poetry, plays, and biographies would likely be better

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suited to situating them within their cy-syst, as their focus would be less on what people do with the technologies and more and what people (and which people) interfacting with them meant. Relationships between technologies, who was allowed and was forbidden to use them, the social status accorded to those proficient with a technology, and a host of other meaningful information can be derived from literary texts. This type of information is described by Saussure as external evidence; that is, it does not come from the system itself, but from people observing what transpires within the system and relaying information about it. More reliable than observation is what Sausurre refers to as internal evidence, or evidence derived from the system itself. One form of this may be taken as Evidence from the Regularity of Sound Changes. This is the process of establishing the value of a sound represented by a letter through understanding the value of sound of the letter from which it descended; for example, if one is trying to determine the sound of a letter that produces a sound akin to the hard “k,” it is highly unlikely that its phonetic ancestor would be a vowel. If both the values of preceding letter and a descending letter are known, isolating the value of the intermediary letter is even easier (de Saussure 1986, 35). Likewise, if one is trying to determine the value of a cymeme, knowing the technology or body from which it descended makes the process of determining its value within a borgmeme or cyborg significantly easier; knowing what cymeme follows it in its evolution delimits the value possibilities even further. Obviously, the values of these cymemes will not be identical any more than the values of letters remain the same; there will be some similarity through successive iterations, but each will likely depart further from the previous one. For example, if we know the potential value of a land line phone but not the value of a flip phone, a rough estimate of that value may still be formulated based on an understanding of the originating cymeme. If both the value of the cymeme land line phone as well as the value of smart phone are known, then isolating at least an approximation of the value of the intermediary flip phone to a narrow range becomes a relatively simple proposition. Another type of internal evidence is Contemporary Evidence, which may be drawn from a variety of forms that are contemporaneous with the object of study. Saussure gives the example of “z” and “s” being found in variations of spellings of a single word in Old High German (“wazer” and “waser” are one of the examples he uses); knowing that these words share a common meaning but differ in their spelling, it is easy to suppose that the value of the differing letters might share a common value. However, as no spelling variation appears as wacer, it is likely that at this point “c” did not share a common value with “z” and “s.” We can see this same move with cymemes. At one point, a female body would not have shared a common value with a male

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body to form the cyborg chief executive officer. All the technologies of such a role might have surrounded her body, and her body’s ability to interfact with them could have been equivalent to that of a man, but because the societal value of her body would have been markedly different, the ability to form a recognizable cyborg would have been minimal. However, values of letters can change; eventually, “wacer” became recognized as a legitimate spelling as the value of “c” changed over time. Likewise, chief executive officer is now recognizable if a woman’s body is part of its formation as a ganmeme with society (or at least a large portion of it) acknowledging the ability of that body to effectively form this meaning. Saussure also comments on literary language that relies upon words with common phonemes in patterns with commonality that allow us to deduce what the value of a given letter might be; for example, if the value of “e-a-r” is unknown in the word “bear” but is known in the word “pear” and the two words are placed at the ends of lines of a poem, a reasonable guess as to what the value of the letters would be in “bear” even if these values have never been properly ascribed independently. In the same manner, artistic representations may be made of various cymemes and borgmemes that may be used to ascribe values to them in comparison to other such representations. For example, if we are unsure of the value given to a married female body (housewife) doing dishes in a play, but we do know that the only other bodies that perform this task in other plays from the same time in that cy-syst are those that are considered servile and low class (servant, dishwasher) with the work represented as beneath the average male body, we can make a fairly accurate guess as to what the value of housewife would be. Saussure also makes mention of borrowing words from other languages. If we are aware of the value of spellings in the origin language, we can make a reasonable guess as to the value of the spellings in the recipient language and vice versa. I wish to make a brief point on this topic without delving too deeply into it, as it could easily be a complete chapter in its own right. We frequently see white American culture borrow indiscriminately from other cultures in an act known as cultural appropriation. In terms of cyborg semiotics, this would be the act of mimicking or removing a cymeme or even a borgmeme from the original cyborg and inserting it into a new cyborg without consideration to the transformation of the meaning of the new cyborg and how its insertion into the new cyborg might result in a meaning that mocks, denigrates, or obfuscates the original cyborg. We can see an example of this linguistically with a simple substitution in the word “looker,” a problematic word in its own right, but one that is usually used just to refer to an attractive woman. However, should we keep most of the original word but replace the “l” with an “h,” we are left with “hooker,” a word that carries a vastly

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different meaning. Changing the value of a single phoneme can easily result in a word that is disrespectful; claiming a lack of understanding as to why such a word is disrespectful to person to whom it is being applied, especially after it has been explained to the one using it, does not excuse continued usage of that word. We can see examples of this cy-systs such as the adornment of Native American war bonnets by Caucasians during Halloween (and other occasions). The war bonnet is connected to specific bodies and other technologies in specific manners to form an observation pattern; like removing a letter and inserting a different one into a word, removing from those bodies and technologies and further decontextualizing it by using it outside of its intended cy-syst creates an observation pattern that forms a mocking cyborg to those who understand its value within an observation pattern that is not only unrelated to its original one but is also denigrating to those for whom that meaning still exists. It is supposed to create specific meanings when combined with Native American bodies and in conjunction with other technologies associated with that culture; to remove it from that context and combine it with other bodies and technologies alters it in a denigrating fashion. Another method of recognizing the value of a given letter is every literary person’s favorite form of humor: puns. Puns are humorous because of their relatively simple structure: a slight shift in the value of a letter results in changing meaning, often within a recognizable cultural trope. For example, Prince Hamlet is in negotiations to buy a pair of breeding cattle. As usual, he is torn over what to do, especially since the price for the cattle is high and he is unsure whether or not they are worth such an exorbitant amount of skillings. As he sighs his way through the door, Ophelia looks at him curiously and inquires, “So Hamlet, did you buy the cows?” He ruefully shakes his head and dramatically queries, “Two beef or not two beef? That is the question.” The joke is made through a combination of the listener’s knowledge of Hamlet’s backstory and notorious line and the addition of the phoneme represented by the letter “f” to the end of the word “be” (the extra “e” in “beef” does not alter the phonetics of the word). There are several elements required for the joke to work ideally: the listener must know Hamlet’s personality, must be aware of the line from the play, and must have a rudimentary knowledge of phonetics. The phonetic alteration is a simple linguistic key that opens the door to a richer transposition of meaning. Frequently, puns have a complex and lengthy story leading to what their misguided detractors argue is an overly simplistic payoff: the groaner. However, even the most basic payoffs require a quick grasp of the transposition of meaning gained by the turn of the key, especially when they are improvised; also, the longer setup means that more meaning is typically unlocked through the turn of the phonetic key. However, for said key to work, knowledge of the value of the phonemes in

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one of the words must be known, which should then indicate the values of the comparable phonemes in the other. As with linguistic puns, cyborg puns rely on misplaced cymeme to turn the key and unlock meaning. Awareness of the original combination of ganmemes and technnemes forming the cyborg are required to fully grasp the nature of the pun, as well as an understanding of the cultural significance of both the original cyborg and the one created through the shifted cymeme. We learn these types of cyborg puns early; Aristotle comments in Poetics that “[r]epresentation is natural to human beings from childhood. . . . Also everyone delights in representation” (Aritstotle 2010, 90). I would agree with our esteemed Hellenic forebearer, but I would add this addendum: representation is natural to cyborgs, and so children (and those with a childlike disposition) delight in misrepresentation. For example, one of the most basic forms of technology that we use on a daily basis is clothing. It is a part of the basic observational pattern of every cyborg, and various cyborgs have certain technemes that are commonly associated with their body-as-ganmeme. Children rapidly learn about clothing, as it is ubiquitous in their freshly hatched lives and one of the few technemes they have a fair amount of consistent control over; they understand how it operates and where it belongs on their bodies as well as on others. Now, if a pair of underwear (a techneme) is placed on one’s head as a hat (another techneme, and thus the substitution) rather than one’s bottom, the result is a simple cybernetic pun that will have children rolling with gales of laughter (or slight disgust, depending on the child’s level of awareness). This misplacement is also a movement from private to public, much like vocalizing an “e” that is normally silent. Should the underwear belong to a member of the opposite gender of the body upon whose head it rests, the joke becomes even funnier, as the techneme being utilized is further from the original cyborg meaning from which it derived while still referencing the cultural connection, requiring understanding of both the cyborg to which the cymeme originally belonged as well as the “meaning” of the rather ludicrous resultant one. It becomes a joke of both positionality (as if a letter shifted within a word) as well as substitution (the letter has been replaced with a new letter that still allows recognition of the word from which the substituted letter was borrowed). However, if the substitution is not a simple one or one that doesn’t result in a cultural connection, the joke just is not as funny. For example, if a modem is placed on one’s head, there is little humor to be had. It does not reference another item of clothing like transposing a pair of underwear for a hat, nor does it reference a transposition of gender identity in an unusual manner. Neither does it bear a visual, functional, or cultural reference to the techneme for which it is substituting, rendering it ridiculous rather than clever.

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A comparable pun is made by Indian artist Shreya Arora who has been drawing male superheroes wearing female superheroes’ costumes and striking the same poses, publishing her images juxtaposed to the original. This has a comparable effect, changing a single ganmeme (the gender of the body) to the opposite gender while maintaining all the other technemes. Doing so raises the question of the appropriateness of the technemes and their subsequent depiction; if the techneme looks utterly ludicrous on a male ganmeme that is a superhero, why is it accepted as natural on the body of a superhero that happens to be the opposite gender? Those who make this point often raise the question of functionality; if armor on a melee fighter is not covering anything, why would someone who is a fighter wear it? As an observation pattern, replacing the techneme fully functioning armor with the techneme armor that barely covers the nipples and butt does not result in a cyborg that can create the meaning serious combatant. Substituting the ganmeme male body for the ganmeme female body while maintaining the techneme armor that barely covers the nipples and butt using male bodies that are part of cyborgs that usually indicate serious combatant shows the inability of even these bodies to maintain that meaning while wearing the ridiculous armor; as such, how can female bodies be expected to maintain this meaning as part of a cyborg? This so-called armor would usually be part of a cyborg that indicates sexual availability, which is what many of these images seem to be depicting. The use of such armor while claiming to form serious combatant would be the linguistic equivalent of inserting the letter “t” into the word “fighter” as a substitute for the “f” and claiming that “tighter” has comparable meaning. A new meaning is formed because the value of the substituted letter creates a sound image that has meaning, one that is independent of the original word. In a like manner, revealing armor or costumes not only do not aid the female hero but also actively detract from her ability form serious combatant, especially while simultaneously forming sexual availability, in almost any cy-syst. Phonemes are limited in both their formation and their subsequent values according to the construction of the human vocal apparatus: larynx, mouth, tongue, teeth, and so on. Similarly, the ability to form cymemes is restricted by manufacturing capabilities and accessibility to the technemes necessary to form the cyborg. Should I wish to produce an unaided supersonic shriek at 150 decibels, neither training nor straining will allow me to do so. Likewise, should I desire a fully functional light saber that can hack off a battledroid’s arm and deflect laser blasts, such a dream is, alas, still beyond our manufacturing capabilities. As such, despite my desire to create a cyborg with such a technology as part of its observation pattern, my wish shall be curtailed until our manufacturing capabilities evolve to that point, just as I would have

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to wait until the human vocal apparatus evolved into something beyond its current limitations to produce an unaided sound on par with a jet taking off. The human vocal apparatus is relatively limited in its ability to produce recognized distinguishable phonemes; there are only so many sounds it may generate. Different languages place different values on different sounds, and some sounds that the vocal apparatus may produce have value in one language but no value in other languages; for example, the clicks that originated in the Khosian languages before spreading to some other African languages have no linguistic value in any other language. Also, unfamiliarity with certain sequences may lead to a misunderstanding of the phonetic sequence, such as the Peking/Beijing debacle that has taken centuries to correct. Since the physical limitation of producing technemes is the extent of manufacturing capabilities, the relative capacity for production is significantly greater, but it also means that the greater quantity of technemes may result in a large quantity that have either values that are either null or unrecognizable in cy-systs other than the originating one. For example, hijabs, niqabs, and burkas are often seen as having comparable values by those unfamiliar with the Islamic cy-syst, resulting in a misunderstanding of the cyborgs that they help comprise. Language has certain beats and rhythms formed of recognizable subsets of phonemes; these phonemes form syllabic units that become recognizable within a given language and form a substrata that a language operates from. Saussure notes that physical limitations not only prevent the creation of certain sounds but also the creation of certain sequences: [T]he speaker is free to produce [a] sound by any means he can. But matters are not so simple the moment we consider the pronunciation of two sounds in combination. We find ourselves obliged to take into account the possibility of discrepancy between the pronunciation intended and the effect produced. For it is not always within our power to pronounce as we intended. Freedom to link sound types in succession is limited by the possibility of combining the right articulatory movements. (de Saussure 1986, 51)

Likewise, cyborg syllabics (cyllabics) are comparably limited by the physical ability of the cymemes to interfact with each other. If those cymemes are unable to interfact in a meaningful way in the desired manner, what results is a cyber-gibberish: technologies and bodies “together” but not creating the desired effect for the observer. There will be no recognizable cyborg formed. Certain phonemes within languages flow together easier than others, such as the English combination “sm” (though the ease of these combinations are, of course, culturally influenced); likewise, certain cymemes are designed to interfact with each other. Cy-systs will prioritize the creation

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of combinations of specific cymemes, making it easier to blend them and prioritize their recognition while rejecting others. For example, the phonetic sequence “v-q-y-l-z” is unrecognizable in English. It is not, however, unproduceable (though my vocal apparatus did not approve of my attempts to do so; I hilariously sounded like I was choking on a pickle). Within my linguistic background, this is a nonsense syllable that my apparatus is unaccustomed to producing, and my attempts to do so were largely unsuccessful. Had I grown up in a linguistic community that prioritized this particular sequence, my apparatus would have become more attuned to producing it, making its creation much simpler through familiarity and even minor reshaping of the physical apparatus of production (stretching of the vocal cords in a particular manner, shaping of the cheek muscles, bend of the tongue, etc.). We can think of technological cymemes as functioning in much the same manner. If there is a desired combination of technologies and bodies within a cy-syst, familiarity with the desired combination will eventually lead to the manufacture of smoother methods of interfaction. Allowances will be made for the physical characteristics of the cymemes, leading to a smooth cyllabic production. Just as we have subdivided types of syllables (open syllables, closed syllables, dipthongs, etc.), we can subdivide (and further subdivide) cyllables (clothing, construction equipment, vehicles, etc.); again, the sheer quantity of technologies makes rendering this taxonomy a much more challenging proposition, one which I will certainly not be attempting in this work, as it will be a text of immense proportions in its own right. Let us consider how these cymemes develop together to form syllables using the cyllable group clothing. This cyllable group is composed of hundreds of cymemes and borgmemes, two of which are belt and pants. At one point, belts could hold up pants, though they were primarily used for ornamentation rather than functionality, and the belt could be comprised of something as simple as a length of rope. In 1922, Levi’s filed a patent for the first belt loops, allowing for smoother interfaction between these cymemes. Just as the vocal apparatus may adjust with training to produce certain syllables, such as practicing tongue twisters to make them easier to pronounce, so may the means of production adjust to produce smoother interfactions between cymemes within a cyllable. Cyllables may also end up blending with each other over time, borrowing cymemes from other cyllable groups to create a new cyllable, or even borgmemes or complete cyborgs. The hijab discussed earlier would also belong to the cyllabic group labeled clothing. However, with the advent of Bluetooth technology, some hijabs are now coming equipped with Bluetooth headphones built in from a cyllabic group that would possibly be classified as personal music devices. Once these two are conjoined, a new cymeme is formed that belongs exclusively to neither of the original cyllablic categories.

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Cyllabics consistently evolve through this type of technological crossbreeding, such as the rather rapid merger between telephones, cameras, computers, video game systems, maps, and so forth into the incredibly powerful and complex complementary electronic brain we carry around in our pockets. Certain blendings of cymemes from a cyllabic group are expected under particular circumstances depending on the cy-syst within which one is operating. In many business situations, the combination of belt and pants is expected; the inability to produce the appropriate cyllable is regarded as a failure to understand proper communication, much like certain dialects that drop letters from words are often mocked for sounding “dumb.” Many of the southern dialects in the United States do this, losing certain middle consonants (“moun’in” for “mountain,” “foun’in” for “fountain”) and end consonants (“hittin’” for “hitting” and “shoppin’” for “shopping.” Comedian Jeff Foxworthy jokes about whether someone would want a surgeon with a thick southern accent to perform brain surgery on them or if it would be better to just die. Another example in some cy-systs would be the failure to pair female body with hijab. Think of this as someone intentionally mispronouncing a sacred word and instead pronouncing one that is blasphemous; while I am neither agreeing or disagreeing with this interpretation, this is the linguistic equivalent within certain cy-systs. In both cases, they reflect either the lack of willingness or lack of desire (or if one cannot afford a belt, a lack of ability) to form the culturally acceptable cyllables as part of the cyborg, which, like an incorrectly pronounced syllable in a word, results in a flawed observation pattern within that cy-syst, though it may be completely acceptable within another. For example, even within the broader scope of Islamic cy-systs, there is disagreement whether female body interfacting with hijab is an acceptable cyllabic combination (or whether any of them are necessary) or whether it must interfact with chador, niqab, or burka to produce an acceptable cyllable. Cyllabic division is not an inherent feature of a cy-syst any more than syllabic division is inherent to language, but one that is guided by cultural rubrics constructed over time. Each cy-syst creates both categories and their divisions according to their own concepts of what should be united. For example, the war bonnet discussed earlier originated within a syllabic group that might be labeled sacred artifacts while other cy-systs that have appropriated it would place it under one that might be categorized as costumes. The cyllabic “beat” would potentially be very different for each of these; for example, the first would likely be partnered with cymemes like bow and horse while the other might be joined with foam finger and beer. As a cy-syst evolves, cymemes may be added or lost to cyborgs as they may be with language without having an impact upon its observation pattern. For example, the Old English word “butere” has lost the ending “e” while adding a second “t” in the middle of the word. These changes have had

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only minor impacts upon the pronunciation of the word, and the meaning of the sound image has not changed. In this light, consider housewife. In times past, women were often considered to be irresponsible drivers, and a woman driving was considered to be a fundamental threat to society; in 1927, Ray W. Sherman wrote, “Every time a woman learns to drive—and thousands do every year—it is a threat at yesterday’s order of things” (Clarke 2008, 10). Now, however, the ubiquitous minivan (or some variation) loaded down with lacrosse equipment, McDonald’s toys hiding between the seat cushions, and kids’ backpacks is a common techneme in forming the observation pattern for this cyborg, whereas in the past, it would have been virtually inconceivable to combine married female body with automobile with the interfaction as a driver. Now, this techneme is an accepted part of the observation pattern. However, technemes such as spinning wheel have largely vanished, much as the final “e” from “butere” simply dropped away; this is not to say that they do not still exist or are not used by some housewives, but they are no longer considered a necessary techneme for her observational pattern as that interfaction has moved from the scope of the home to that of the commercial sphere. In language, not only may phonetic markers be gained or lost, but they may also be substituted. Charles Barber describes in The English Language: A Historical Introduction (1993) how this type of substitution was common during the shift from Old English to Middle English. Barber explains, “A number of new consonant-symbols were introduced. . . . Where Old English had used f to represent both [f] and [v], ME scribes used u or v for the voiced sound. Similarly, z was introduced besides s, though not consistently” (Barber 1993, location 1796). This shift in a phonetic marker does not mean that the sound being produced signaled by the marker has changed (though some slight shift in change is possible), just that the phonetic indicator has shifted. The techneme laundry line has been replaced in common parlance in the United States by dryer, though there are still some parts of the world with cy-systs where laundry line is still the more common techneme. The shift from laundry line to dryer indicates a slight shift in value, but it remains essentially the same, especially in conjunction with the sequence of cymemes that form housewife; both technemes mark the same type of interfactions for the same people. If anything, dryer may indicate a slight middle class “accent” in comparison to laundry line as a lower-class accent (a topic that will be discussed at greater length later).

Chapter 3

Principles of Cyborg Semiotics

According to Saussure, the average person considers language as a direct, uncomplicated correlation between words and things. He uses the following graphic to indicate this overly simplistic presumed relationship, using Latin words as exemplars (figure 3.1).

Figure 3.1.  Image from Saussure’s A Course in General Linguistics demonstrating the perceived relationship between words and meaning.

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As Saussure observes, the warrants made in this paradigm are problematic on multiple fronts. First, there is a presumption of the existence of ideas that function independently of words. (I would take this one step further than Saussure and say that it presumes ideas exist independently of a signifying system.) Second, it does not differentiate between names being a vocalization or a psychological entity, as this overly simplistic model leaves open the possibility of it being either. Finally, it assumes that the connection between the name and that which is being named is straightforward and without complications, which as we have already seen is far from the case. Despite these flawed beliefs, Saussure maintains that there is one element of value in this concept: the dual nature of the linguistic unit (de Saussure 1986, 65–66). Saussure claims that “[a] linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept and a sound pattern. The sound pattern is not actually a sound, for a sound is something physical. A sound pattern is the hearer’s psychological impression of a sound, as given to him by the evidence of his senses” (de Saussure 2986, 66). Figure 3.2 demonstrates the relationship between the concept, which he terms as the “signified” (the signifié in the image below) and the sound image, described by Saussure as the “signifier” (the signifiant). Once these two elements are unified, they form a whole that Saussure defines as the “sign.” Cyborg semiotics has a comparable triad. In order to differentiate between linguistic and cybernetic terminology, we will refer to the cybernetic terms

Figure 3.2.  Image from Saussure’s A Course in General Linguistics demonstrating the relationship between the signifier (signifié), signified (signifiant), and sign. The cybernetic equivalent to these terms are the construct, the cygnified, and the cyborg. Public domain.

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as the construct (signifier), the cygnified (signified), and the cyborg (sign). We have discussed the observation pattern as an equivalent to the Saussurian sound image; it is composed of cymemes in a recognizable pattern within a cy-syst. Viewing a construct within a cy-syst will trigger the cygnified, the concept that has been attenuated to members of the cy-syst as linked to that particular group of sequential cymemes. Only through the combination of the observation pattern and the concept may a cyborg be formed. If there is no observation pattern established within a cy-syst for a particular sequencing of cymemes, then a member of that cy-syst will view those combinations as a random assortment of bodies and technologies; however, another cy-syst may endow the same sequence of cymemes with meaning, leading to the creation of a cyborg. Saussure establishes two intrinsic principles governing the sign. Both on their surface appear not to apply equitably to the cyborg, and if they do not, then employing the rules of linguistics to cy-systs would not be practicable. However, if we dig deeper into the nature of cyborgs, we find that not only do these rules work quite well within cy-systs, but they can also be revelatory in understanding how we decode the world around us. The first principle he terms the arbitrary nature of the sign—that is, there is not an intrinsic connection between the signifier and the signified. “There is no internal connexion, for example, between the idea ‘sister’ and the French sequence of sounds s-o-r which acts as its signal. The same idea might as well be represented by any other sequence of sounds. This is demonstrated by differences between languages, and even by the existence of different languages” (de Saussure 1986, 68). In short, the sounds produced via the vocal apparatus and the meaning intended have no fundamental link to each other; the only connection is culturally fabricated via widespread recognition of a mutually agreed upon construct. The connection between the construct and the cygnified is just as arbitrary as that between the signifier and the signified. This seems, on its surface, to be a ludicrous statement. While letters lie inert on a page or sounds thrum harmlessly (other than possibly to our aesthetic sensibilities) through the air, cyborgs are comprised of technologies and sentient humans with capabilities ranging from removing lint from a sweater to obliterating all life within a several square mile radius; the physical nature of the cyborg would seem to belie the argument that the cyborg is arbitrary. However, the composition of the construct may vary over time and between cy-systs while maintaining the same basic cygnification; in the United States, as the cyborg police officer exchanged the cymeme revolver for semi-automatic pistol, the cygnification remained consistent. In England, this same basic cygnification is maintained despite the vast majority of police officers lacking anything that might fall under the category firearms; instead, they interfact with nightstick, mace, or

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taser. Additionally, female bodies used to be exempted from forming police officer in the United States; while women still face gender issues such as discrimination and harassment while forming this and many other cyborgs, such attempted interference does not prevent them from successfully interfacting with the other cymemes necessary to form police officer. Weaponry and other technologies associated with warfare (uniforms, combat vehicles, staging gear, etc.) are one of the more extreme examples of where we may see this principle in action. American culture associates particular cymemes with the formation of soldier; however, these technologies have not always remained consistent. Mike Bourne argues that there is an ever-evolving relationship between technologies, warfare, and subjectivity that allows for an incessant renegotiation of the composition of soldier. Bourne claims “the relationship between technology and warfare and subjectivity can be argued to be closely entangled, whereby new technologies enter the networks of war through processes of nonlinear adaptation, innovation and faltering assimilation, and affect how the humans (soldiers, policy makers, weapons scientists) behave and conceive of themselves” (Bourne 2012, 158). The evolution of technological cymemes drives the change in the composition of the construct of soldier while maintaining the core meaning of the cygnified. In the United States, female bodies were not allowed to participate in the construct for soldier on equal footing with their male counterparts, even when they proved superior at interfacting with the technological cymemes associated with that construct. Only within the last few years have women been allowed on the front lines because of the concerns over what effects their presence might have on men, including the potential for rape, men responding differently to women who might be wounded than they would to other men, and the supposed inability of women to perform the task of frontline soldiers. Breaking these arguments down is a relatively simple task. The first, concerns over rape, discounts the ability of men who cygnify as soldier to differentiate between soldier and victim. That is, it assumes that males that cygnify as part of soldier will automatically see a female body as victim, even when all of the surrounding cymemes interfacting with her body form soldier. This argument is telling from a variety of perspectives. First, this is the equivalent of someone looking at the word “soldier,” seeing the letter “i,” and reading the word “victim.” There is a single element that both of these words have in common, just as there is a single element that soldier and victim would have in common: a female body. The pathology required to see a full word with only a single letter in common with another word and read that word comes from being taught that any word with “i” in it is a derivation of “victim” and signifies some version of that term. The military was either tacitly admitting

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that it did not properly teach its soldiers how to decode cyborgs that have female bodies as part of their construct, or that female bodies automatically formed victim, or that they actively supported a culture in which any female body is potentially a derivation of victim. Rather than teach males participating in soldier how to decode cyborgs involving female cymemes, they eliminated female cymemes from soldier. Another objection was that female soldiers would have a negative impact on the battlefield if they were injured. Male soldiers would be more likely to risk themselves on behalf of a soldier with a female cymeme than a male one. This is a rather interesting argument, as the Greeks actually felt exactly the opposite, encouraging male lovers within the ranks of their soldiers so that they would fight harder on each other’s behalf. Regardless of the philosophical problems with this argument, the warrant here is that a soldier with a male cymeme cannot treat a soldier with a female cymeme equitably. The final assumption, that women cannot successfully form soldier, seems at first to be more focused on performativity than meaning; however, upon closer inspection, the ability of a female cymeme to interfact with the other cymemes in soldier is beyond doubt. One of the primary cygnifications of soldier (especially those on the front lines) is the ability to kill enemy soldiers; the primary cymeme that participates in this interfaction is firearm (though there are several other technological cymemes that are still present). The clearest interfaction with the techneme (death or injury of the opposing soldier) does not care if the ganmeme in soldier is male or female; this and numerous other interfactions between bodies, technologies, and cyborgs are perfectly capable of being performed by female bodies. Though some of these interfactions are more difficult to form by the average female body, this is an issue that has been argued for literally centuries. Mary Astell made the argument against this assumption in the 1690s. “She moves the argument against women’s education from essentialism to social construction, arguing that women are mentally inferior to men neither through God nor through nature, but only through ‘the mistakes of our education’” (Donawerth 2010, 228). While some interfactions may be proportionately less successful with female cymemes, this in not necessarily because of the inferiority of those bodies to perform those interfactions, but rather because of the social construct that denies their bodies interfaction with these technologies, and like teaching women not to create meaning on the page or through their rhetorical skills, they are denied the ability to create certain meanings within their cy-systs. Additionally, female cymemes participate actively in the formation of soldier in other cy-systs. Israel, for example, has had women serving in all capacities, including front line and special forces, since the inception of their country; during my own time serving in the United States Marine Corps

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Reserves, my fellow Marines and I readily acknowledged the incredible prowess of the Israeli military, even in comparison to our own boastful pride in our own branch. They cygnified to us the meaning of soldier, knowing full well the integration of female cymemes into their ranks. Perhaps one of the primary reasons why we have not seen female cymemes associated with soldier are some of the connotations of this cyborg—power, force, respect. To acknowledge that a female cymeme may participate in this type of cygnification in any cyborg is to open the possibility that it may carry this cygnification in other cyborgs. Rosemarie Arbur, speaking of narratives in which women best men in combat, points out that a female body triumphing over a male one in a military conflict results in a muddled interpretation. She argues, Feminist or not, woman or man, the reader of what happens when the “better half” wins the war is personally dissatisfied, frustrated, and plain scared, for our culture seems increasingly unconscious of what these narratives are all but shouting at us. These narratives, quite simply, are telling us that we better start speaking the same language, lest Mother Eve, the Blessed Virgin, and the legion of uncanonized housewife saints permit our species to do what none has ever done before: sever one half from the other, lose the common language, and tacitly declare itself extinct. (Arbur 1993, 90)

The concern that Arbur expresses seems hyperbolic, and yet there is a legitimate concern in her pleas for mutual comprehension. Oftentimes the decoding of cyborgs such as soldier with female cymemes, even within the same cy-syst, results in conflicting cygnifications; though we are “speaking” the same language, we are not arriving at the same meaning. Members of other cy-systs who have no heuristic for evaluating soldier with a female cymeme or even cultural or religious prohibitions against such an organizational pattern might view this same construct and instead come to a cygnified of heretic or blasphemous. The nature of the cyborg is thus arbitrary, lacking intrinsic connection between construct and cygnified, as interpretations of the construct may vary not only between cy-systs, but even within cy-systs themselves. This is not to say that there is not overlap between the cymemes composing comparable cyborgs in different cy-systs, which some may use as an argument for an intrinsic connection between construct and cygnified. There are two possible explanations for this synchronicity. The first is that the cy-systs are connected in a cybernetic “family,” much like languages are connected in various language families. Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese are all Romance languages, sharing common linguistic ancestry. As such, the composition of their words for the English word “dancer,” for example, resemble each other closely: “danzatore,” “danzante,” and “dançarina,” respectively. They share

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common phonemes for comparable words because of their Latin origins; while nobody would argue that these languages are the same, there is enough overlap that someone who is familiar with one can at least glean some meaning from the others, even though it may lack nuance. Likewise, someone who is familiar with soldier with a female cymeme in one cy-syst would likely be able to piece it together in another, even if some of the technological cymemes with which her body is interfacting are different. For example, female soldiers who are Muslim might have niqab as an essential part of their construct, adding a cymeme that comparable bodies in other military oriented cy-systs might not possess in their own, but with the other cymemes associated with soldier still present and easily interfacted with by her body, she will still be decoded as soldier by those possessing familiarity with military cymemes. The other option for this kind of overlap is simple coincidence. Although words with similar meanings from languages with no common ancestor might share some phonetic structures, there is no inherent cause for that particular sound to be associated with that meaning across different languages. Comparably, a cyborg from two different cy-systs may share some cymemes without necessarily having a common origin cy-syst. For example, burial pyramids were built thousands of miles apart in Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica without any apparent connection between the two cy-systs. The lack of intrinsic connection between signifier and signified in Saussurian terms means that the signifier is “unmotivated,” though this lack of essential connection does not mean that the speaker has free rein to alter the signifier (68–69). There are two primary objections Saussure mentions that may be brought to bear against the unmotivated sign. The first are onomatopoeic words, those words that are supposed to signify meaning by reproducing the sounds of the object or biological entity they are describing. Saussure mentions as an example of this flawed logic the difference between the French dog’s “ouaoua” and the German dog’s “wauwau” (de Saussure 1986, 69). However, we can expose the flaw of this objection using examples drawn exclusively from a single language. In English, there are multiple onomatopoeic words for the sounds made by a dog: “bark,” “arf,” “ruff,” “woof,” and “bow-wow,” to name just a few. All of these are supposed to be onomatopoeic, and yet they barely resemble each other, much less the actual sounds produced by women’s best friend (that’s right, according to Chambers et al., dogs’ relationship with women was the more critical one in their domestication and for civilization). In fact, “bark” and “woof” lack a single common phonetic marker, as do “arf” and “bow-wow,” and yet all are accepted as valid onomatopoeic representation. This lack of consistency of phonetic structure within even a single signifying system demonstrates the lack of motivation of the sign in representing onomatopoeic words.

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Onomatopoeic cyborgs are those that appear to be self-defining through their composition; for example, family was presumed by most Western cysysts to be self-evidentially comprised of cymemes including one adult male, one adult female, and children (these bodies could be of either gender, though male bodies were often accorded more stature, and quantity was unspecified, though various sizes have been seen as preferable depending on cultural biases). Currently, this assumption of the “obvious” cymemes in forming this cyborg are being challenged on a variety of fronts. Two adult females and two adult males have gained much wider acceptance in many Western cy-systs as acceptable components of this cyborg. Children are no longer considered quite as mandatory, though families without are often eyed queerly and questioned about the lack, especially the women participating in the cyborg. Even the quantity of adult bodies involved in forming the cyborg is beginning to receive some pushback, as the polyamorous community is starting to gain traction in disrupting the arbitrary choice of two adult bodies. All of these challenges to the composition of what was once considered a “natural” construct of a cyborg point to the lack of true onomatopoeic cyborgs. The other objection mentioned by Saussure is exclamations. In language, these verbal ejaculations occur suddenly and spontaneously. Again, Saussure chooses to make the comparison between the French aïe! To the German au! Even within English, variations of the composition of exclamations are common; for example, “fuck” versus “fudge.” Everyone knows what is meant when the latter is used; in fact, people can finish the word mentally after the first couple phonemes; as such, the impact of the difference is a simple understanding that the individual using the explicative maintained some degree of self-control. Another example of the derivation of “fuck” is the use of “frak” by the reboot of the television show Battlestar Galactica. The show did not want to be censored or receive a TV-MA rating for excessive swearing, yet it wanted to accurately portray military discourse. As such, it created “frak” and used many of the same variations as “fuck,” including phrases such as “that frakking ________,” “frak me,” “oh, frak,” “frak that,” and “frak off.” The expletive was completely recognizable despite the variation of the construct and was able to be used without explanation; it is now a staple of geek language, having been greedily adopted. In a like manner, certain interfactions with technologies may appear to be obvious exclamations in a given situation; for example, the revving of a car engine to demonstrate readiness to race is roughly the cybernetic equivalent of verbal gibes such “Yeah! Yeah!” or even “Fuck you!” However, this same statement could be made in a variety of ways ranging from loud music to flashing headlights, or even creating new technologies such as color changing lights on the doors that demonstrate the RPMs by moving from violet to red across the spectrum as they increase, a more accurate measurement of the

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vehicle’s power than noise as a loud engine may be the result of something as mundane as a punctured muffler. None of these observation patterns are essentially connected to what they cygnify, despite their seemingly obvious nature. Though these types of cyborgs may be categorized as exclamations, the composition of their cymemes is just as arbitrary as any other cyborg. In addition to the arbitrary nature of the sign, Saussure describes a second principle that governs linguistics: the linear character of the signal (or signifier). Saussure states, “The linguistic signal, being auditory in nature, has a temporal aspect, and hence certain temporal characteristics: (a) it occupies a certain temporal space, and (b) this space is measured in just one dimension: it is a line” (de Saussure 1986, 69–70). This is a principle that, on the surface, does not appear to apply the construct in the same manner. And yet, upon closer examination, parallels between the two appear. A linguistic signifier is certainly bound by time; it takes only a brief moment for the utterance to originate in the brain, be formed and executed in the vocal apparatus, cross the intervening air between speaker and hearer, and be received by the brain. This is a linear process followed by other signifiers also unfolding in sequence, back and forth, ad infinitum. Constructs reveal themselves through their observation patterns temporally as well, though the strictly linear progression of the construct differs from that of the signifier. When hearing the spoken word on the page or listening to spoken words, the letters or phonetics follow a strict sequencing. With signifiers, observing the construct may happen in fits and starts, and the obsrevation of the cymemes’ interfactions may occur in various orders; however, our brains will attempt to fill in the gaps and shuffle cymemes to form a comprehensible pattern, just like you did as you read the misspelled word “observation” earlier in this sentence; even if you noticed the disruption of the traditional pattern, you were easily able to mentally reorganize the sequence to recreate the dominant order. As long as the letters appear in a fairly recognizable sequence, we can decode them and assign meaning to them, even if they are not in the exact pattern that we are accustomed to. We do not have quite such strict regulatory patterns governing the sequence of cymemes, though like phonemes, we experience them in a linear manner through time as we observe them. There are certain sequences that permit easier recognition than others, though. “Obsrevation” was a relatively simple “out of sequence” pattern that required little mental effort to decode, as there are a limited amount of agreed-upon signifiers that possess these particular phonemes and fewer still that have this particular sequencing. However, “vinosbeaort” becomes a much more difficult task to decode. The task becomes even more challenging if a reader has only read the first three letters. Possible sequences include “v-i-n-e,” “v-i-n-t-a-g-e,” and “v-i-n-e-ya-r-d.” Even more confusing is if the reader encounters these three phonemes

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simultaneously rather than sequentially and know they are connected but have no way of knowing the sequence. Additional opportunities for signifiers arise, such as “i-n-v-e-r-t,” “i-n-v-i-t-a-t-i-o-n,” or even “N-I-V” (the abbreviation for the New International Version of the Bible). Likewise, if the sequence of cymemes that is encountered are female body, cell phone, and laptop, the potential constructs they could form are countless. Writer? CEO? Teacher? Politician? As the observation pattern continues to fill in with additional observed cymemes, possible constructs are rejected by process of elimination, and we move from seeing a group of cymemes to forming a cyborg. Using our earlier example, as soon as “o” is added to “v-i-n,” the possibility of forming “invert” is eliminated, as that word does not include that phoneme in its sequence. In the same way, if we add 42nd floor corner office to female body, laptop, and cell phone, the possibility of teacher is all but eliminated, writer is greatly reduced, politician has some potential, and CEO becomes the mental prohibitive favorite, though additional cymemes could still alter the selection of a construct. But why do we accept so readily that either a signifier or construct must carry a particular meaning? Why do particular sequences of phonemes or cymemes mean something while others do not, even though alternate sequences could just have easily been selected possess meaning? Saussure observes that the burden of meaning withing language is generational, carrying inertia and tethering its descendants to choices that go back for generations (de Saussure 1986, 71–72). As generation upon generation endows particular signification to a signifier/construct, the sign/construct becomes entangled with numerous other signs/cyborgs to create specific meanings in shorthand form. See the earlier discussion of “fuck” and “frak” for just a few of the variations of meaning that can be granted to short phrases that signify more than their surface meaning and how their significant entanglement creates a vast array of meanings based upon interdependent signification. As signs become increasingly entangled with other signs, a shift in the signification of one sign would seemingly have to have a ripple effect of having to shift meaning in other signs. One of the clearest recent demonstrations of this phenomena in terms of cyborg semiotics is the flag protest instigated by Colin Kaepernick. The collective (mythological) inertia in civilian society behind United States Flag, standing body has become so entangled with other cyborgs such as military and patriot that the shorthand was presumed. This would be like hearing “fuck” and presuming the next word would be “you” when numerous other options are readily available, including “me.” However, if one is only accustomed to the sequence “fuck you,” when someone says “fuck me” the assumption is made that the speaker has misspoken and is actually saying something insulting. Ironically, Kaepernick’s choice to kneel was motivated by a former Green Beret and Bronze Star veteran, Nate

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Boyer, who was at the time a long snapper for the Seattle Seahawks. Boyer suggested that kneeling allowed Kaepernick to remain with his teammates, as well as being a sign of respect such as in prayer or concern for a fallen soldier or injured player; that is, there was no circumstance where a kneeling body was considered to participate in a cyborg with a negative cygnification. It would be like trying to spell the word “d-i-s-r-e-s-p-e-c-t” with an “o”; the derisive possibility was eliminated from the chain. However, because the meaning was different from the one with significant entanglement behind it, and because his body was black and therefore read differently in conjunction with the flag, negative cygnifications were heaped upon him such as disrespectful and unpatriotic. The inertia and entanglement of the cy-syst refused change, labeling any attempt at alteration as detrimental to its integrity. In addition to inertia and entanglement, the constant process of learning one’s own language also creates resistance to change. Saussure states that “linguistic changes do not correspond to generations of speakers. There is no vertical structure of layers one above the other like drawers in a piece of furniture; people of all ages intermingle and communicate with one another. The continuous efforts required in order to learn one’s native language point to the impossibility of radical change” (de Saussure 1986, 72). Clark describes this as a developmental loop, “in which exposure to external symbols adds something to the brain’s own inner toolkit” (78). One is not only constantly acquiring language from previous generations as a child, but also attempting to learn new linguistic terms as the physical and cultural environment evolves. The effort required to sustain the addition of new signs distracts from any efforts to modify those signs; in fact, the thought that such change might be possible rarely crosses the minds of those who use language, as it is not typically a conscious process (72–73). Any attempts to do so would seem disruptive of something fundamental rather than constructed since language functions primarily at a subconscious level. Trying to alter a system of signs or cyborgs while still attempting to learn that same system is a daunting challenge. This is further complicated with cyborgs, because not only is one attempting to learn what the cyborgs mean, but one is also constantly trying to learn what they do; since one is unaware that both of these processes are taking place (and even if one is aware of the later they will often deny the existence of the former, insisting that the former is the only reality), attempting to change the meaning of a cyborg is not even a thought that would arise for most people. Saussure posits four primary challenges to the invariability of the sign. The first is the arbitrary nature of the sign itself. Because the sign is arbitrary, there appears to be no reasonable argument to favor one over the other or to shift from one sign to another sign; all signs are simply sound images connected to concepts, and one sound pattern is supposedly no more suitable than another.

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However, once a particular signifier becomes associated in a negative way with concepts beyond the root denotation, the connotations of that sign can infiltrate the denotation, so those who self-identify with that sign may desire a shift in signification to a sign that is not so burdened with extemporaneous adverse meaning. For example, the linguistic term transvestite came to carry connotations of freak and perversion in mainstream Western cultures, requiring a shift in signification to trans in an attempt to claim a signifier without the additional connotations. This is not to say that there are not still those who have carried such meanings over to the new sign, but the shift in signification at least allows for the possibility of a more neutral meaning. With cyborgs, we see the same challenge, one that Saussure himself fails to recognize. Saussure offers the following example, “For in order to discuss an issue, there must be some reasonable basis for discussion. One can, for example, argue about whether monogamy is better than polygamy, and adduce reasons for and against. . . . But for a language, as a system of arbitrary signs, any such basis is lacking, and consequently there is no firm ground for discussion” (de Saussure 1986, 73). Here, Saussure is simultaneously correct and incorrect. While he is correct that arguments can be made about the merits and challenges relative to polygamy versus monogamy, he is incorrect in his assumption that these are not themselves also significations, and thus arbitrary in their connection to meaning. Polyamorous can signify meaning equitably to monogamous, and it does so in many cultures. In fact, there is no rational reason why polyamorous should not carry meanings of normal, family, and stability while monogamy could carry meanings of abnormal, perversion, and unstable. As a culture, we have arbitrarily decided that three adult bodies as opposed to two shifts meaning in a negative direction in family, even if that unit is happy, stable, and fully functional; what those bodies do is irrelevant to the meaning assigned. It is because of the arbitrary nature of the cyborg that such resistance takes place; the decision was made centuries ago that the proper number of adult bodies involved in family was two, so why would we arbitrarily change that? The argument is that changing the composition of cymemes would change the meaning, but if the meaning assigned is in fact arbitrary, then the cygnification does not have to shift. The second challenge enumerated by Saussure is the enormous volume of signs required to form a language. He notes that while a system of writing is composed of a limited number of letters (typically 20–40) representing a slightly larger number of phonemes, the variation of signifiers that can be formed from this pool are still almost impossible to quantify. Moving from a system of phonemes to one comprised of cymemes exponentially increases the potential quantity of cyborgs that could be formed. This dramatic increase in cygnification is especially valid in the current era with the rapid evolution and turnover of technology. Imagine a language in which letters were

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incessantly being added, removed, or changing their values. Trying to use those letters to create familiar words would be challenging enough as they were shifting through phases of existence or values; add to that the complication of attempting to first learn and then create new words as the old ones are no longer considered valid forms of expression. Then, add a further complication of being denied access to certain letters to create the desired word based on external factors that have nothing to do with one’s ability to make the word if they had access to the proper letters; these factors might include the perception of the status of one’s genitalia, the reflection of light upon one’s skin, or an arbitrary quantitative perception of one’s value by a small group of individuals. One could create the desired word and then find out that the letters used to form that word are no longer considered the correct ones and no longer have the resources to access the new letters required to form the same word, even though that word is something they could physically pronounce if they were granted access; these are the challenges brought about by the both the quantity and transitory nature of cygnification. Learning to form the cyborgs one desires can be challenging, as there are nuances that are often overlooked by those who do not grow up with them; it is often argued that the main factor that determines one’s future success is the zip code one grew up in. I would argue that this five-digit number possessing so much power over one’s destiny is because they learn to subtly cygnify within these power structures, mastering the formation of a multitude of arbitrary cyborgs recognized by others in power as “correct,” despite the randomness of the cyborg’s construction. The vast quantity of available (and potentially available) cyborgs speaks directly to Saussure’s next factor in creating invariability: the complexity of the system. There are 312 possible two-letter combinations using at least one vowel with a vowel either before or after the other letter involved. Some of these we have assigned meaning to and others lack signification, but signification could potentially be assigned to any of them (and I am sure I am not the only one who has been bested in Scrabble by a random two-letter word that I had no clue existed, right?). Add a third letter and the number jumps into the thousands (3,380 if my crowdsourced math is correct). Move the number of variables from a mere twenty-six for the English alphabet to the hundreds (thousands?) of technological cymemes, and there is an infinitely more complex system of cygnification, with an unknowable number of cyborgs that are significantly entangled with other cyborgs. Additionally, the potential for a larger number of categories, structures, and sequences of the cyborgs that may all be intricately intertwined (though they may or may not actually be) creates enormous challenges to altering any one cyborg. Because a cysyst is a homeostatic system, it is designed to constantly both function and reproduce itself. Saussure notes that to change a complex linguistic system

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would require focus by those who use the system, most of which have little self-awareness of those complexities; interventions by “experts” such as grammarians and linguists who have knowledge of the system’s complexities and could supposedly make the changes have historically proved largely fruitless. Intercession by these experts would be the equivalent of a mechanic jumping on the hood of a race car while it’s barreling down the freeway and trying to adjust the timing of the engine when the driver does not believe that there is a problem and actively attempts to dislodge them. Translating this experience to the complexities of a cy-syst is more like a pit crew trying to change a tire of a race car in the middle of the Indianapolis 500 with a driver determined to win and sees the pit crew as sabotaging their potential to get the checkered flag. This is what Clark refers to as a persisting loop, “in which ongoing neural activity becomes geared to the presence of specific external tools and media” (Clark 2003, 78). The desire to maintain what is will foment resistance to what might be; we desire the stability of the cy-syst in order to preserve our way of knowing, as to alter it might cause us to not be able to comprehend it. Since the cy-syst is changing constantly already of its own accord, additional intervention is often viewed as an assault on one’s ability to understand the world. This analogy segues into Saussure’s final point on the invariability of the sign: collective inertia resists all innovation. While he specifies linguistic innovation, this principle also applies to cy-systs. He comments, “[L]anguage . . . is something in which everyone participates all the time, and that is why it is constantly open to the influence of all. This key fact is by itself sufficient to explain why a linguistic revolution is impossible. . . . It is part and parcel of the life of the whole community, and the community’s natural inertia exercises a conservative influence on it” (de Saussure 1986, 74). This is one area where we may see more transformative opportunities for cy-systs than we see for linguistic systems. Even taking into account subsets of languages such as slang and technical jargon, there are numerous technologies which are used by smaller numbers of people, while common language tends to be shared by a greater percentage of a given population. As such, a smaller number of individuals who work closely with a technology may have more control over what that particular cymeme and the resultant cyborg means than a word would, even if that word were used primarily by a subset of a population, as language is viewed as something that belongs to all speakers of that language, while technologies are actually “owned” by individuals and not seen as collective property. While this stratification based on ownership prevents many people from cygnifying in their desired manner, it does mean that those who control a particular cymeme will have greater influence on the cygnification of any cyborgs inclusive of it. As such, a smaller group of people can exert a fairly large influence upon certain cygnifications. Unfortunately, this often

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means that those with power can exert control on the cygnification of others, as they control not just large quantities of cymemes themselves, but they also control the production of other cymemes and attempt to dictate the meanings of that which they create, though this effort has varying degrees of success. Reappropriation of a cyborg or even repurposing cymemes to use in new and unexpected constructs resists these types of domineering intentionalities. Once a cymeme is in the hands of a culture, subculture, organization, or social class, the possibilities of how it helps create a cyborg rest with them. Even though it has history, tradition, and cultural weight behind it, the smaller the group interfacting with it leaves open greater possibilities of reshaping what cyborgs it can form before it moves across the larger cy-syst. The weight of the community is not the only factor in linguistic fixity; time also creates a chrysalis which surrounds and restricts free motion of the sign/cyborg (though like a chrysalis, the sign/cyborg may eventually emerge, transformed). Saussure notes, Bearing in mind that a language is always an inheritance from the past, one must add that the social forces in question act over a period of time. If stability is a characteristic of languages, it is not only because languages are anchored in the community. They are also anchored in time. . . . Continuity with the past constantly restricts freedom of choice. . . . Ultimately there is a connexion between these two opposing factors: the arbitrary convention which allows free choice, and the passage of time, which fixes that choice. It is because the linguistic sign is arbitrary that it knows no other law than that of tradition, and because it is founded upon tradition that it can be arbitrary. (de Saussure 1986, 74)

If we wish to consider this issue again from the perspective of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the community carrying the weight of tradition is the measure of the present position; it is where we are at. Consideration of the increasing rigidity of meaning is an examination of the movement of the cyborg, or should we say instead the study of the gradual reduction of movement of the cyborg as meaning becomes encased in layers of silk; even after it emerges from its chrysalis, transformed into a meaningful butterfly, our levarus burtonus lepidoptera immediately begins spinning new silk, restarting the process of restricting its movement before it can even fully dry its wings. Each repeating strand adds weight, bearing down on the new cyborg, denying it movement. But this is not the only obstacle it faces. As it spins its threads, the other butterflies around it are simultaneously spinning their own silk, fixing themselves in place as well. These threads frequently become entwined, interlocking one to the other, joining their destinies together. One cannot escape the other, and each successive thread knots them more firmly

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together. The cygnifying chrysalis and significant entanglement are how time locks meaning into a sign/cyborg. For cyborgs, we see the evolution of technemes all the time, but even these are constrained by time, for these are inextricably linked to prior cymemes. N. Katherine Hayles observes, “The new cannot be spoken except in relation to the old. Imagine a new social order, a new genetic strain of corn, a new car—whatever the form, it can be expressed only by articulating its differences from that which it displaces, which is to say the old, a category constituted through its relation to the new” (Hayles 1995, 323). A new cymeme cannot be created without the material of previous cymemes, and cyborgs must be created from combinations of new and old cymemes, just as the butterfly emerges from the raw organic material of the caterpillar and the pupa. However, just because there is resistance to change in signification does not mean that it does not occur; language changes constantly, as do cyborgs and cy-systs, both at the level of the individual cyborg and at the structural level. Saussure argues that neither phonetic alterations that change the composition of the signifier nor shifts in meaning that alter signification, either in isolation or combination, are to be considered as the point, but focus should be placed upon the shift in the relationship between signifier and signified (de Saussure 1986, 75). Saussure uses as an example the change of the Old German word “dritteil” (a third) to the modern “Drittel.” While the concept has remained intact, the relationship between the signifier and signified has altered in two ways. First, the grammar of the word has altered as “teil” is no longer recognized as a phoneme meaning “part” in this instance; the word stands unbroken and undivided in its signification. Additionally, the phonetic structure is modified, losing the “i.” We see this same type of alteration with the variability of cyborgs. If we examine the variability of chief executive officer over time, we see that the requirement of male body now has the option of female body, though that is not western cy-syst’s preferred or even equitable composition. This shift is like opening up the potential value of a vowel to allow both the long and short variations to form a signifier. This is common practice with regional variations of words. For example, common pronunciation of the word “about” in the United States is “ah-bowt,” while in Canada it is “uh-boot.” Both are recognizable as signifying the same signifier despite all the vowels carrying different values; within the structure of the other phonemes, the signifier is still clearly identifiable. Neither form is arbitrarily better than the other; they simply carry slightly different values for certain phonemes. Additionally, as in Saussure’s example, we sometimes see the condensation of cymemes as we do with phonemes. Chief executive officer used to be composed of cymemes including multi-line telephone, desktop computer, snail mail, and reference books. These have all been reduced down to a single

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cymeme, smart phone. While the other cymemes might still be present, they are no longer essential to formation of the cyborg. However, trying to form chief executive officer in the current American cy-syst without smart phone would be like trying to form “chief executive officer” without “f”; one might be able to still recognize it, but it would be substantially more difficult and awkward to identify, or with the reinforcement of pronunciation/production, difficult to “pronounce.” While Saussure argues successfully for the variability of the sign, he attempts to do so by undermining the variability of the cyborg, stating, Other human institutions—customs, laws, etc.—are all based in varying degrees on natural connexions between things. They exhibit a necessary conformity between ends and means. Even the fashion which determines the way we dress is not entirely arbitrary. It cannot depart beyond a certain point from requirements dictated by the human body. A language, on the contrary, is in no way limited in its choice of means. For there is nothing at all to prevent the association of any idea whatsoever with any sequence of sounds whatsoever. (de Saussure 1986, 76)

As do most people, Saussure has confused what cyborgs do with what they mean. He simultaneously overestimates the potential for variability of the sign while underestimating the possibility of variation of the cyborg. His argument that language has no restrictions upon its ability to create a sign is, ironically, contradicted by the very limitation he places upon the cyborg: the limitations of the human body. The sounds that can be produced by the human body are limited in scope by the physical constraints of the vocal apparatus. His comparison of clothing to the spoken word is not an inaccurate one, he simply reached an inaccurate conclusion. He is correct in stating that the physical constrictions of the body reduce the possible options available to clothing, but these limitations do not play any more of a factor in shaping cygnification than my inability to sing at a C above high C prevents me from carrying on a casual conversation with a neighbor. Not every possible sound needs to be available to a speaker in order to conduct discourse; this physical limitation is upon the range of possible signifiers, not upon the range of signification. In like manner, while cymemes under the category clothing may have some limitations upon their possible configurations due to the bodily parameters, there are still countless options available for these cymemes to form part of a construct. There are even bizarre options available; one could place a bucket upon their head to form a playful cygnification, for example, much like one might substitute a “w” for an “r” form “pwetty wabbit.” Control over the cygnification at first appears to belong to manufacturers of technemes, but their intent is often subverted by users (speakers) who utilize

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their technologies in the creation of their own cyborgs. Though manufacturers control a variety of elements that influence the distribution of their techneme products, including price points, packaging, product placement, and so on, once it is in the hands of the consumer (speaker), the manner in which it creates cyborgs and what those cyborgs cygnify is up to them. Saussure notes that this principle remains true even when the linguistic system is artificially created (de Saussure 1986, 76). We see this principle in action in video game cy-systs. These are self-contained systems in many ways, with the manufacturers controlling countless options within the game. Despite this seeming overarching power, users of the product still have control over the cygnification of the final cyborg, including the utilization of mods and cheat codes to alter the intended game play. Even when they are not altering code to change the cymemes within the system to accommodate their desired cyborgs, they still have control over determining the meaning of the cymemes within system in conjunction with the bodies that utilize them. Forces that shape and reshape a cy-syst are both social and temporal, and in order to understand the functioning of any signifying system, the functions and influences of both must be factored in. As Saussure states, If a language were considered in a chronological perspective, but ignoring the social dimension (as in the case of a hypothetical individual living in isolation for hundreds of years), there might perhaps be no change to observe. Time would leave no mark upon the language. On the other hand, if one looked at the community of speakers without taking the passage of time into account, one would not see the effect of social forces acting upon the language. (de Saussure 1986, 78)

Saussure’s theory is that if an individual or even a small group of individuals is isolated, then there will be no impetus for language to evolve. Jared Diamond provides an excellent example of how this same process functions within a cy-syst in his highly acclaimed text Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond notes that the Aboriginal Tasmanians were isolated on a small island approximately a hundredmiles off the coast of Australia, itself the most isolated continent, for over ten thousandyears (Diamond 2017, 308). After their isolation, they not only failed to produce any substantial technological progress such as metal working, nets, or traps, but they regressed, losing basic technologies such as fishing, awls, and needles (Diamond 2017, 379). While Diamond does address briefly the impact of isolation on technological maintenance and development, I wish to propose here another possibility: the lack of urgency for cygnifying development within their cy-syst. In relationships, people learn shorthand forms of communication over time. Couples who have been together for decades can communicate more with a glance and

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a slight eye-roll than many couples who have only been together for a few years. In a small, isolated population, shorthand communication may develop not only linguistically but also within their cy-systs. While larger populations require a greater complexity of communication in order to accommodate their diversity, a smaller population by virtue of a more limited ganmeme base from which to operate will lack that diversity. Reduced diversity will require not only fewer words, but fewer technologies to convey the same cyborgs. If other means of providing food are readily available and I do not happen to have skill with fishing, do I need to learn how to cygnify as fisher to also cygnify as provider? If not, then the cymemes that form fisher will fall into disuse as other cymemes that are more readily accessible and functional are prioritized to form meanings that are, if not exactly the same, comparable to the one desired. The limited number of skills among the ganmemes to interfact with technemes will restrict which technemes survive within the cy-syst. The influence of social forces cannot be overemphasized in the evolution of cy-systs, for not only will there be a lack of growth without social influence, but as we have seen with the Tasmanians, we may even see consolidation and regression of cygnification. Likewise, if one considers only a single moment in time of a language, the social forces exerted on its evolution lose their weight, as movement is replaced with a static image. This is the equivalent of taking a single frame of a film and studying it independently of all the previous frames (or even the subsequent ones). While one might go into detail with understanding this still frame, it is nearly impossible to understand how this particular scene was arrived at. With a cy-syst, the elimination of time in the examination leaves a fixed society, one with no history, no evolution, and an unknowable future. As earlier mentioned in regards to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, we can either study the evolution of a cy-syst or we can study the current condition of a cy-syst; we may know either its movement or its location, but we cannot examine both simultaneously with any kind of accuracy any more than we can simultaneously observe both the minute details in the single frame of a film and know what the previous and subsequent frames will divulge. The more the focus is placed on one, the greater the detraction from the other. Examining the still frame will permit us to study the moment, while watching the film will allow us to examine movement. Studying the social mechanics of an isolated moment of a cy-syst would be referred to by Saussure as a synchronic study, while examining its evolution he would term a diachronic study (de Saussure 1986, 81). The objects of study for a synchronic study could include the cymemes that compose current cyborgs, the rules governing interfactions between cyborgs, and the narrative structures formed by current cyborgs. Conversely, the causative factors for these states and structures are the focus for a diachronic study. Saussure positions these

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factors along two perpendicular axes, labeled the Axis of Simultaneity and the Axes of Succession. The former describes an object within a fixed temporal point, whereas the latter tracks the object’s movement (de Saussure 1986, 80). These may be used to understand the values of phonemes/cymemes or signs/cyborgs. When examining these values, it is important to differentiate between what a cymeme or cyborg does and what it means, as these values are often not connected in meaningful ways. This may be seen in variations of value between designer products and standard consumer products. Consider the example of a Rolex watch versus a knockoff one might purchase on a street corner. On certain wrists, the Rolex carries values such as classy, wealthy, or powerful, whereas on other wrists the same piece might carry a value of stolen. Undiscovered, the knockoff would hold the same value as the genuine article; however, should it be discovered, the cyborg’s value might shift to cheap or poser depending on who is observing it. The knockoff, even if it works well and keeps time accurately while the Rolex is broken, does not hold the same value, and the cyborg’s value is altered regardless of either cymeme’s functionality. The value of a cymeme is thus separate from the value of its functionality; overlap between the two is a function of happenstance, not necessity. Of course, should we consider the axis of succession, the value of either the Rolex or the knockoff has the potential for a change of position. The perceived value may move due to a variety of factors which have little to do with its functionality, ranging from price point, a reconsideration of the importance of luxury items, or even a scandal at the company that causes consumers to shun their products. Through all of these, the functionality of the watch itself remains constant, but the value of the watch could alter. On the other hand, the knockoff may gain in value through celebrity endorsement, a rebranding campaign, or a slightly altered appearance that sweeps social media; again, the actual functionality of the watch remains the same while the value moves. I wish to briefly consider the impact of textual influences upon movement along these axes, using the extremes to demonstrate their influence upon stability and transformation. On one end of the spectrum is instruction manuals for technologies. These texts prescribe the manners in which a technology should be used, including which other technologies they should and should not interfact with. These texts describe the prescribed usage of the technology in much the same manner that Professor Henry Higgins instructs Eliza Doolittle to properly enunciate, “The rain in Spain is mainly in the plain.” There are alternate pronunciations that may still be understood, such as Eliza’s cockney accent. An instruction manual dictates the cy-syst appropriate interfactions between organic and technological cymemes. While there are certainly safety issues addressed within them as well, these are the equivalent

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of Professor Higgins telling Eliza, “Now, don’t bite your tongue.” It must be recognized that these texts serve to maintain a predetermined value for the technological cymemes that they describe in a supposedly neutral manner much like elocution is based in culturally privileged values. At the other pole are works of science fiction. The purpose of these texts is to reconsider the possible values of existing technological cymemes and/ or new cymemes and the influence this change of values might have upon cyborgs. These cyborgs may have as few as a single organic cymeme or may include every organic cymeme on a planet, or even an entire universe. In order for a text to be recognized as science fiction, it must contain logical extrapolations from existing cygnification as opposed to an entirely new form of cygnification; that is, there must a reasonable assumption that the cygnification displayed in the text originated with some form of cygnification already observed. An extension of this line of inquiry would undoubtedly be very fruitful; however, it lies beyond the scope of the current work and will therefore be forwarded to future scholarship. The areas of synchronic and diachronic studies are the difference between the study of contrasting terms versus the iterations of a single term. Sausurre describes this contrast: Are the facts belonging to the diachronic series at least of the same order as those of the synchronic series? In no way. For the changes brought about, as we have already observed, are entirely unintentional. Whereas a synchronic fact is always significant, being based upon two coexisting terms. It is not Gäste which expresses the plural, but the opposition Gast vs. Gäste. With a diachronic fact, just the opposite is true. It involves one term only. If a new term (Gäste) is to appear, the old term (gasti) must make way for it. (de Saussure 1986, 85)

An examination of feminine hygiene products such as those designed for hair removal demonstrates his principles for cy-systs. Were we to examine how these cymemes evolved and how they demonstrated femininity via cyborgs from the copper razors of ancient Egypt through the tweezers and pumice stones of Rome to the modern disposable razor would comprise a diachronic series. This study would examine how one cymeme in a cyborg came to replace another and the motivating forces behind this shift. Conversely, a synchronic study might explore the differences (or lack thereof) between men’s and women’s razors and their impact on cygnification as it relates to perceived value as demonstrated by the pink tax, which places an excessive arbitrary valuation as expressed through economics on cyborgs marked as feminine. In order to differentiate between synchronic and diachronic studies, Saussure employs his renowned chess metaphor, which we will explore

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in depth at this point. While this metaphor applies to both language and cy-systs, Saussure dismisses an element that is crucial that we will explore further; while the dismissal seems minor for language and easy to gloss over, for cy-systs it is foundational and has severe consequences in understanding power disparities. Relative positionality is the first part of his argument. He states, “The value of the chess pieces depends on their position upon the chess board, just as in the language each term has its value through its contrast with all the other terms” (de Saussure 1986, 88). For example, we understand what the cyborg midwife cygnifies through a series of relationships and positionality with other cyborgs, such as expectant mother, baby, and doctor. The cymemes, both technemes and ganmemes, involved with creating this cyborg are contrasted to those in other cyborgs, carving a cygnifying space for itself in relation to them. Without the other cyborgs with which it interfacts, it would possess a different value, one not better or worse, simply different. As with a chess board, the value of a piece is in constant transition, as once a piece is moved, not only has the value of the shifted piece changed, but the value of every other piece has potentially changed as well. For example, a pawn is often regarded as the least powerful piece on the board, but if it is involved in forcing a checkmate, its value alters significantly, and exchanging a queen, considered at the outset of the game to be the most powerful piece, to prevent the mate if that is the only option is considered a fair exchange. If midwife in a warrior culture, for example, were given the responsibility for determining the physical hardiness of newborns and present them to the elders, who would condemn the infirm to death in a process of accelerated Darwinism (as the midwives in ancient Sparta were rumored to do by Plutarch in Life of Lycurgus (16.1), though no direct evidence has been found of this type of infanticide in this instance), then the value of midwife would have been altered as a result of its relationship to baby, mother, and government. Midwife would occupy different spaces, possibly alter technemes that compose its construct, and maybe even add a borgmeme. Despite the incessant transitions from one synchronic state to the next, Saussure argues that the values of a sign/cyborg are determined by rules which are preestablished before the outset of the game, claiming, “values also depend ultimately upon one invariable set of conventions, the rules of the game, which exist before the beginning of the game and remain in force after each move. These rules, fixed once and for all, also exist in the linguistic case: they are the unchanging principles of semiology” (de Saussure 1986, 88). As expressed in the opening quote to this work by Donna Haraway, such an approach is inherently oppositional to the nature of cyborg epistemology. The idea of a singular set of rules that dictate all that follows is an anathema to cybernetic being.

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Saussure further argues that only singular, isolated changes occur within a signifying system that do not result in a general upheaval. While the same may be said of cy-syst, a single change will impact other aspects of the cy-syst in a cascading effect; however, from a synchronic perspective, these changes will almost always occur sequentially, one leading to another in a domino effect. These changes may occur more rapidly than their linguistic counterparts, but they are still happening one at a time. For example, as DVD Player replaced VCR, the later became the butt of jokes and a generational marker; using one today might be a marker of poverty or in certain circumstances retro (as has happened with record player). With the advent of multiple streaming services, the condensation of multiple technologies into individual devices (game consoles, smart televisions, smart phones, etc.), DVD Player is sailing in the wake of VCR; synchronically, these cymemes carry comparable values, with the system maintaining equilibrium through each subtle shift. There are changes associated with this transition; for example, the rise of streaming video has resulted in the reduced usage of retail video (when the last Blockbuster in Bend, Oregonclosed, all of Gen-X shall mourned its passing). This transition, however, was not instantaneous; synchronically, one happened and then the next. Even though these transformations in cygnification happen both sequentially and locally, the sequence can be rapid and expand quickly beyond the immediate cy-syst. This is more common when transformations take place among cyborgs that involve greater quantities of cymemes and borgmemes, such as countries, religious institutions, and multinational corporations. One of the most prominent examples of a drastic shift as the result in the inclusion of a single cymeme was the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This interfaction immediately altered the interpretation of United States; while it already cygnified powerful, the neocyborgism superpower was launched, closely followed by other countries who acquired atomic weaponry. However, not only did the cygnification of United States change, but because of its shift, the relative positional value of every other roughly equivalent cyborg had to be reconsidered in relation to its new position. Saussure’s next claim appears innoxious on the surface: in brief, he claims that the method in which a given positionality is reached is irrelevant to understanding it within a synchronic state. This is an especially problematic statement, and it is inaccurate not just from the perspective of chess, but also from a signifying approach. He extends his chess metaphor in the following manner: In a game of chess, any given state of the board is totally independent of any previous state of the board. It does not matter at all whether the state in question has been reached by one sequence of moves or another sequence. Anyone who

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has followed the whole game has not the least advantage over a passer-by who happens to look at the game at that particular moment. In order to describe the position of the board, it is quite useless to refer to what happened ten seconds ago. All this applies equally to a language, and confirms the radical distinction between diachronic and synchronic. (de Saussure 1986, 88)

His metaphor of a chess game here is accurate, but the problem with the way he uses it in this instance is that he actually does not extend the metaphor far enough. Chess is a game played by people with habits, tendencies, and capabilities, all of which factor into not only understanding the current position of the board, but also the future stages of the game. Chess is an exchange of information between two people, and insight into those people who control the board is how the board itself is understood. His claim that a passerby may understand the condition of the board fails to account for the understanding of the game and the players acquired by someone who has carefully observed not just the board but also the players and their tendencies, strategies, and tactics. One player may prefer a long game, full of tension and a constant knife’s edge balance, while another may prefer to simplify the board through trades, eliminating pieces to reduce the factors in the game. I happen to enjoy an opening known as the Sniper, an odd one that puts pressure on my opponent’s long diagonal, hoping the pressure there will eventually cause an error for a rapid winning series of trades (unfortunately, it is also one that may be countered effectively by someone who understands all of its intricacies, but few do). Someone who has seen me play in the past will then know that I favor my bishops over my knights and know that in a given neutral situation on the board, my predilections as a player (which are not necessarily knowable from the board itself) reveal information about the board’s current state. Saussure briefly acknowledges this weakness in his argument, though he greatly downplays it, stating, “There is only one respect in which the comparison is defective. In chess, the player intends to make his moves and to have some effect upon the system. In a language, on the contrary, there is no premeditation. Its pieces are moved, or rather modified, spontaneously and fortuitously” (de Saussure 1986, 88–89). From a linguistic standpoint, this argument is dubious at best, as control of language has been a source of contention for some time. For example, Cheryl Glenn comments that “[f]or the past 2500 years in Western culture, the ideal woman has been disciplined by cultural codes that require a closed mouth (silence), a closed body (chastity), and an enclosed life (domestic confinement)” (Glenn 2010, 36). The lack of speech Glenn describes would be the chess equivalent to having few pieces on the board and being in a losing position. A passerby who has not closely observed the game might think that an individual playing with so few pieces is simply being beaten by their opponent, a common approach taken by those

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in power in a misogynist culture. They argue that men simply play the game better inherently, when in truth they have been granted access to a wider variety of language. Having access to more pieces means more opportunities to create winning opportunities. It means a more versatile board. It means the ability to fully play the game according to the skills you have rather than the skill you are restricted to. And the manner in which the board arrived at that position is crucial to understanding the skill and capabilities of the players, as well as the way they view the current board. The board is never neutral. The claim for neutrality is even shakier with regards to cygnification. As Haraway notes, “Language is not innocent in our primate order. Indeed, it is said that language is the tool of human self-construction” (Haraway 1991, 81). If language cannot be neutral in construction of self, how much less can cygnifying be neutral as we physically construct the self? Technemes are created by manufacturers with a specific cross-section of a cy-syst in mind for its usage. While this intent doesn’t prevent other ganmemes from interfacting with it, manufacturers can utilize a variety of techniques to steer particular individuals or groups toward or away from interfaction with their technemes, such as targeted marketing, price points, and distribution. Limited access to certain technemes reduces the ability to create the desired cygnification, just like lacking letters may limit the ability to create certain signs or even groups of signs. As such, the board must be viewed in contested terms. That is, while there is a game that takes place upon the board, there is also a fight for pieces that takes place off of the board. This contest determines who has access to which pieces, and has largely been dominated by men, both linguistically and cybernetically. Men have held controlled certain pieces upon the board while limiting women’s access to those same pieces, hiding them, barricading them behind safes, or holding them in the open and daring women to leap across the board and try to rip them from his hands. Now, like the game itself, this contest may also be viewed either synchonically or diachronically; however, to deny that the off-board struggle plays a part in game play is to deny that players exist and that argue the game plays itself.

Chapter 4

Cybernetic Valuation

In referencing the types of linguistic studies, Saussure notes that the study of “general grammar” belongs to synchronic linguistics, as it is the study of the relationships between existing signs. So too shall the study of general cyborg grammar belong to synchronicity, as the examination of the relationships between existing cyborgs shall be the focus of this aspect of cyborg semiotics. As Saussure comments with linguistics, synchronistic studies prove to be a more difficult task than historical examinations (de Saussure 1986, 99). For example, the differences between teacher at various times are relatively easy to trace, as we can look back retrospectively and observe the cygnification of teacher and the rules governing its relationship to other cyborgs such as student, school, and parents; these are historically set facts that are observable (though not always accurately so and often interpreted through particular lenses). Conversely, the current relationships between teacher these other cyborgs are still in the process of forming and reforming their relationships; they are unstable and subject to change. The effects of COVID-19, for example, are at the time of this writing still playing out and will undoubtedly have long-term unforeseen consequences on the nature of the relationships between these cyborgs. Will proximal interfactions between teacher and student be deemed as crucial as it was prior to the pandemic? Is it necessary for teacher to be physically located in school on a daily basis? The unsettled nature of these relationships and countless other questions makes analysis of the synchronic state of grammar a more challenging task than that of retrospectively examining the evolution of these relationships. Saussure observes that within synchronic linguistics, the focus is not on an isolated moment of time, but rather a period of relative stability. This is not to say that a language does not change over the selected time period, but rather that the transformations are negligible and without significant magnitude. He then differentiates between “epochs” and “periods.” The first is a point in time and the second a length of time; however, he prefers the term “state” to avoid the connotation of sudden disruption. While he acknowledges that such 87

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disorders form the transitional phases of history, he denies that such mayhem shapes language (de Saussure 1986, 99–100). Within cy-systs, periods of relatively stability may be shaken quickly through technological innovation. A cascade of technological transformation may result from a singular scientific advance or an alteration in social consciousness that sends geometrically expanding ripples through a cy-syst. A little over sixty years ago, Ruby Bridges was the first African American girl to attend an integrated school. Today, an African American woman is a heartbeat away from the presidency. While there are still numerous obstacles to full and equivalent cygnification for women to overcome, especially women of color, this type of transformation in the possibility of cygnification is dramatic within a single lifetime. Stability is relative, of course, and there are technological eras that are historically acknowledged; for example, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Industrial Revolution, and so forth. However, these descriptions again focus on what a technology does and not what it means with a body. While there will likely be some overlap between these types of periods, these intersections would be coincidental and not causative. The physicality of the technology carries no inherent meaning without a body, and a body without technologies can carry only minimal meaning. Much like a lone vowel without consonants, the opportunity for meaning is severely curtailed without technological addendums. This isolation does not mean that a body alone does not carry meaning, nor does it mean that a body cannot cygnify in important ways. It is a simple acknowledgement that without technological cymemes there is a limited spectrum of cygnification available. The “I” (I) of the body is important, but without technological cymemes, the borgmeme that is I is limited. With the addition of other letters, “I” can become “engineer,” “librarian,” or “representative.” Likewise, it takes technemes to transform the naked body (the ganmeme), the I, into an engineer. While bodies maintain some limited cygnification without technologies (they are limited borgmemes in their own right as well as ganmemes), technologies completely lack any ability for cygnification without a body with which to interfact. For example, one would think that a firearm has an obvious cygnification; however, if it is laying on the ground without a body interfacting with it, it is simply a hunk of metal. In a woman’s hand fighting a war, it helps form soldier, while in a man’s hand intent on sexually assaulting a woman, it participates in the formation of rapist. In an art gallery with patrons observing it with four others in the shape of a peace sign, it participates in hope, while in a deer blind with a man in camouflage, it participates in forming hunter. However, without a body and additional cymemes to form a complete cyborg, a technology is simply an inert, decontextualized object without cygnification; unlike bodies, they are not self-contained borgmemes.

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In order to be recognizable as a linguistic unit, a sound sequence must be delimited from other sound units that form on either side of it; that is, there must be an identifiable contrast between the desired signifier and any other signifier within a language. Saussure defines it as “a segment of sound which is, as distinct from what precedes and follows in the spoken sequence, the signal of a certain concept” (de Saussure 1986, 102). These linguistic “units” are distinct from any other unit according to the rules of a given language, and without knowledge of the governing strictures, parsing them properly would be an impossible chore; sounds would run one into the other in a never-ending soundstream, and trying to isolate one would be like trying to pluck the correct drop of water from a river as it flows by. Once the rules are known, isolating and delimiting units becomes a much simpler task. If trying to isolate units of language without understanding the rules would be the equivalent of plucking the right drop from a river, trying to do so from a cy-syst would be more like discriminating a single drop in the ocean. While a river flows in a clear linear direction, the ocean has significantly more depth and breadth, and as such, it can be more difficult to determine the movement. Unlike the clearly defined linearity of language, the cymemes of cyborg may be encountered in any sequence, complicating delineation of the construct and associating it with the proper cygnified. Imagine a game of hangman, where the letters are revealed to us one at a time, but we do not know how many letters are involved in the word or if the letters we encounter are in a particular sequence. For example, we see “r,” “c,” and “o.” Is this “recording artist”? Is it “coroner”? Could it possibly be “doctor”? Any of these are a possibility. Through specific sequences that we are likely to encounter as well as observing other surrounding sequences, we make our best guess as to which possibility has the greatest probability of being correct. If next to “r-c-o” we see “h-s-p-t-l,” we might be able to strategically suppose that the remaining letters of the first letter set are “d-t-o.” This is what we do every day as we observe various cyborgs. We almost never see the full cyborg, but through contextual clues and filling in the blanks with missing cymemes we are able to complete the cyborg and associate the proper cygnification. If we are near a hospital and see a woman walking through the hallway wearing scrubs with a stethoscope around her neck, we might narrow the possibilities of cygnification down to “doctor” or “nurse” while discounting possibilities such as “janitor” or “x-ray technician.” As such, we shall define a unit within a cy-syst as “a specific homeostatic association of technologies and body(ies) which, when interfacting, construct a particular concept, distinctive from others within the same cy-syst.” Both spatial and temporal proximity between cymemes makes identification of a construct easier, as does ease of interfaction. For example, if we encounter a woman standing next to a pair of scrubs but not actually wearing

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them, do we still assume the scrubs are something she actually wears? Perhaps instead of “doctor” she is “salesperson,” “launderer,” or “tailor.” As before, we may examine surrounding cyborgs to determine context and attempt to isolate what a lack of immediate proximity might mean. If the scrubs are hanging on a rack and she is behind a counter, we might make one assumption about what the remaining cymemes are, while if there are sewing machines, fabric, and pins, we might make another. Temporal proximity plays a role in determining the missing cymemes as well. One could think of this as the difference between the “s” sound in “stop” and in “hiss”; the sound itself does not change, but it extends over a greater period of time. As any nurse will gladly reveal, the amount of time nurse spends with patient almost always far exceeds that of doctor. If one observes comparable technemes interfacting with ganmemes, but one only spends a few minutes with patient while the other spends hours, discerning which one is nurse and which one is doctor can usually be presumed from this temporal factor. The smoothness of the interfactions between cymemes also plays a role in determining the meaning of a particular cyborg. If we see that she is placing the stethoscope on the wrong part of the arm for a blood pressure test, perhaps she is student or actor (or again, as a nurse will happily tell you, perhaps the misplacement of the stethoscope is due to her being doctor). The inability to “properly” form the desired cyborg reveals an unfamiliarity with the techneme, which would undermine credible cygnification. However, the lack of present capability to cygnify should not be interpreted as an inability to cygnify. As far back as 1694 in the United States, Mary Astell argued that it was neither through divine intention nor their natures that made women inferior to men, but instead it was due to an unequal education program that systematically denied women equal access to knowledge (Donawerth 2010, 228). Struggles to form a particular cyborg are often interpreted as an inherent or natural defects rather than a denial of education or experience in forming it. With equitable opportunities to master specific cygnifications, more bodies will be able to create a wider variety of cyborgs. The manner of interfaction between cymemes must also be considered in cygnification. If we consider the words “tough,” “would,” “coup,” and “count,” we see that they all have the same vowels; however, the values created by those vowels create varying sound images; there is nothing about the surrounding letters to indicate what those values should be other than a linguistic familiarity that only one imbedded within the language can properly assign values to these sequences. Likewise, different cyborgs may contain sets of cymemes that are similar but are assigned different values not according to the cymemes themselves, but rather according to the cultural familiarity with the values attributed to the surrounding cymemes in conjunction with that set.

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For example, if a young body is perceived interfacting with certain cooking equipment (knives, oven) at a fast food restaurant, she will be perceived as fast food worker; however, place the same body and comparable equipment in a Michelin Star restaurant and now the value on the combination of body and knives shifts, forming chef or prodigy. While nothing has changed with that particular combination of cymemes, the surrounding cymemes inform those familiar with the methods of creating meaning within related cy-systs will understand how to shift the values of this particular grouping to create the properly associated cyborg. Further delimitation depends on the desired scope of observation from which one is operating. In the foreword to The Cyborg Handbook, Haraway rightly contends that the planet-as-Gaia is a single cyborg, one consisting of increasingly smaller cyborgs (Haraway 1995, xi–xii). Saussure notes that many words are complex units containing smaller units that combined to create signification; conversely, there are also larger units than words such as compounds or phrases, requiring multiple words to create the desired signification (de Saussure 1986, 104). Determining which cyborgs are necessary for the desired cygnification may prove challenging. Cygnification is inherently reductive, as layers of cyborgs are peeled back from the planet-as-cyborg (universe-as-cyborg?) to leave only the ones needed for the specific cygnification desired. As signifiers cut specific ideas from the whole cloth that is every-concept, so too do constructs discard bodies and technologies from potential cyborgs, reducing them to only those arbitrarily chosen to indicate the selected concept. As Saussure notes, identifying units of a language is a challenge, as these units exist only in contrast to each other and have no substance; despite these limitations, there can be no denial of their existence (de Saussure 1986, 105). While Saussure claims that these features make languages unique among semiological structures, the case of units in cyborg semiotics finds itself in much the same predicament. While language is a historically confirmed field of study, the study of cyborgs is a field that has been, at best, dispersed among other fields of study without a cohesive unifying morphology or pedagogy. There has not only been an absence of inquiry into the study of cyborg cygnification, but in many cases a flat denial of such a field as a viable area of study, as Baudriallard’s protestations against the possibility of such a discipline demonstrates. And yet (to use one of the most loathed lines of any professor grading papers), since “man began” we have cygnified; in fact, there is an argument to be made that cygnification is when “humanity” began. While the signs of languages are abstract and the cyborgs of cy-systs and physical, they suffer from the same ailment: a lack of clear delimitation of the structure of a unit. Instead, there are arbitrary distinctions made in different cy-systs between cyborgs consisting of various combinations of technological

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and organic cymemes and borgmemes with different values assigned that are often argued as “natural,” yet the differentiation in values between comparable cyborgs in different cy-systs shows that these values are indeed quite arbitrary. The argument that the values are “natural” hides their constructed nature, leading to a lack of investigation into the power structures that shape the construction; why deconstruct something that is “natural”? Delimiting a given cyborg may prove to be just as challenging as delimiting a sign. Saussure (ironically) uses the example of a train to demonstrate the complexities of delimiting a sign in one of his signature analogies: We assign identity, for instance, to two trains (“the 8:45 from Geneva to Paris”) one of which leaves twenty-four hours after the other. We treat it as the “same” train, even though probably the locomotive, the carriages, the staff etc. are not the same. Or if a street is demolished and then rebuilt, we say it is the same street, although there may be physically little or nothing left of the old one. How is that a street may be reconstructed entirely and still be the same? Because it is not a purely material structure. It has other characteristics which are independent of its bricks and mortar; for example, its situation in relation to other streets. Similarly, the train is identified by its departure time, its route, and any other features which distinguish it from other trains. Whenever the same conditions are fulfilled, the same entities reappear. (de Saussure, 107)

Since Saussure is kind enough to provide a cyborg as an example for his purposes of defining delimitation, we will gladly accept his gift and merely dig deeper into it, showing how it may be useful in a variety of ways to understand the delimitations of cygnification. As Saussure rightly points out, a specific train is not identified through its physical composition alone, but by a variety of factors such as origin, destination, departure time, and so on. Likewise, a street may be completely rebuilt, and yet remain readily identifiable via its proximity to other streets even should not a single cobblestone or speck of asphalt remain from the original roadway. It is this contrast between features that allows us to place a certain value on a train or a street, not the composition of either. To take his analogy even further, the locomotive, cars, and even staff could remain the same but depart from a different location headed for a new destination and despite the common physical features it would no longer be thought of as the “same” train. The contrasts with other cyborgs (train station, origin city, arrival city) and its relationship to them provide the provide the impetus for train’s identity and subsequent values. While there are some commonalities, these are shades compared to the contrast to the surrounding cyborgs. If we return to nurse, the easiest way to identify this cyborg is through its relationship to the cyborgs around it, such a doctor, patient, and hospital. Nurse may appear in a variety of physical configurations, including a wide

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variety of bodies and technologies involved in forming the cyborg. Poorer hospitals may lack more sophisticated technologies possessed by wealthier ones, and different nursing specialties may interfact with particular medical equipment according to the directives of their discipline while neglecting others. These relationships permit delimitation of one cyborg from another. However, it is important to recognize that the value of a cyborg or a sign is not inherent to their composition. Saussure returns to the chessboard to illustrate this point: Consider a knight in chess. Is the piece by itself an element of the game? Certainly not. For as a material object, separated from its square on the board and the other conditions of play, it is of no significance for the player. It becomes a real, concrete element only when it takes on or becomes identified with its value in the game. Suppose that during a game this piece gets destroyed or lost. Can it be replaced? Of course it can. Not only by some other knight, but even by an object of quite a different shape, which can be counted as a knight, provided it is assigned the same value as the missing piece. (de Saussure 1986, 108–9)

From a conceptual standpoint, the components of a cyborg are nothing more than a jumble of bodies and technologies that are in proximity to each other without the cy-syst to provide a framework for meaning; in chess, without the rules that dictate the value of the piece in relation to the others on the board, a knight is merely an inanimate hunk of plastic, wood, stone, or whatever random collection of matter the craftsperson formed it from. It could just as easily be a child’s toy, a decorative sculpture, a keychain, or a doorstop. The chess piece is a unit in a system, and the rules of that system determine its relative value. In like manner, a cyborg has no value without the cy-syst to determine its value; just as a chess piece is a defined unit with value, and likewise a sign, so too is a cyborg. How then to determine separation of values? Saussure notes that without signs, differentiation between concepts would become an impossible chore, as thoughts form an enormous amorphous cloud with no distinction between one thought and another. Without language to give thought form, individuated ideas would be impossible to form (de Saussure 1986, 110). Cy-systs face the same challenges, as indicated by Haraway’s earlier expression of Gaia-as-cyborg. The entire world is comprised of organisms and technologies interfacting with each other and the world around them. Without cy-systs to give values to these smaller units, it would be impossible to differentiate one from the other. Imagine if every concept imaginable was a giant sheet of rolled out dough; it is uniform, huge, with one section very much resembling the next. Using language, we create unique cookie cutters that give form to an idea, separating one part of the dough from that around it in its

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own gingerbread man, pumpkin, or snowflake shape. Without this system to give them meaning, there would be no cyborgs. Humans and technologies would simply “do” without “meaning.” The frequently troublesome pen of Neil Postman provides a rare useful observation, that “technologies create the ways in which people perceive reality, and that such ways are the key to understanding diverse forms of social and mental life” (Postman 1993, 21). More precisely, it is the technologies in combination with bodies that provide these shapes, and understanding these shapes will provide insight into a both communal and individual lives. Also like a cookie cutter, some things get left behind, undefined until discovered later; these trimmings are outside of the mainstream culture and are often regarded as immoral or scatological. They are conceptual excrement, as adding them to the existing cookies would require an alteration not just to the cookie, but also to the mechanism that forms it: the cutter itself. This modification would in turn change the manner in which cookies in the dough fit together, implying that if one cookie is larger, another must be smaller; that is, granting one cookie more dough takes dough from another. The flaw in this paradigm lies in that the cookies are never removed from the larger sheet of dough. They remain intact within the dough itself, free for anyone to observe. Including more dough within one cutter does not diminish the original; rather, it adds to it. Including “two adult female bodies” in family does not diminish “one adult male body and one adult female body” that also forms family. Concepts are not a zero-sum game. It is doubtful that cyborgs could even form consistently without cy-systs, as there would be little social impetus for them to do so. While “doing” things is important, the “meaning” of the “doing” within a particular cy-syst cannot be determined without the structural intervention of the cy-syst. Saussure uses the metaphor of a piece of paper, with the two sides of the paper inextricably connected: Thought is one side of the sheet and sound the reverse side. Just as it is impossible to take a pair of scissors and cut one side of paper without at the same time cutting the other, so it is impossible in a language to isolate sound from thought or thought from sound. To separate the two for theoretical purposes takes us into either pure psychology or pure phonetics, not linguistics. Linguistics, then, operates along this margin, where sound and thought meet. The contact between them gives rise to a form, not a substance. (de Saussure 1986, 111)

Just as sound creates a physical pattern that registers on the brain via soundwaves, so to do cyborgs carve their concepts from the vast ocean of concepts to permit an identifiable meaning. Whereas linguistics operates in the margins of the meeting of sound and concepts, cyborg semiotics functions at the

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intersection of human ingenuity and concepts. It is humanity’s attempt to bring meaning to its creations, to rationalize the embodiment of its dreams; it assigns meanings to what these innovations mean with bodies, arguing that these meanings justify not just their inception but the consequences of their interfactions. Often, the value desired of the resultant cyborg is preconceived by the creator of the techneme before its manufacture; for example, the creator of a muscle car may design it to convey meanings such as strength, cool, and masculine (although as previously established, while the creator may attempt to give impetus to such meaning, the users of a technology will ultimately determine the values it cygnifies with what bodies) in conjunction with a male body. The creator attempts to join meaning to form, solidifying that meaning as strongly as possible, creating both the front and back of the paper simultaneously. If consumers can become aware of the danger of preformed meanings and seize control of those meanings for themselves, denying the creator control over a socially empowered value, the power structures that currently exist predominantly among the elite may be undermined, dismantled, and returned to the people. The producers will often focus on influencing both the meaning and the value of the cyborgs created by the technologies they generate in order to maximize profit; the fact that they can manipulate both of these demonstrates the arbitrary nature of cygnification. If meaning and value were inherent in the cyborgs themselves, the attempts to mold them by their creators would be unnecessary. While value and meaning are related, they are not the same. As Saussure indicates, Values always involve: (1) something dissimilar which can be exchanged for the item whose value is under consideration, and (2) similar things which can be compared with the item whose value is under consideration. These two feature are necessary for the existence of any value. To determine the value of a five-franc coin, for instance, what must be known is: (1) that the coin can be exchanged for a certain quantity of something different, e.g., bread, and (2) that its value can be compared to another value in the same system, e.g., that of a one-franc coin, or of a coin belonging to another system (e.g. a dollar). Similarly, a word can be substituted for something dissimilar: an idea. At the same time, it can be compared to something of a like nature: another word. Its value is therefore not determined merely by that concept or meaning for which it is a token. It must also be assessed against comparable values, by contrast with other words. (de Saussure 1986, 113–14)

The exchange value of a cyborg may likewise be measured in both similar and dissimilar circumstances. As far as something dissimilar, we see that a unique combination of organic and technological cymemes interfacting in a recognized manner may be successfully exchanged for concept of a cyborg

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demarcated within the cy-cyst. The question that arises is what bodies interfacting with what technologies may then be exchanged for what concepts. Haraway observes that the modern feminist concept of gender originating with de Beauvoir’s claim that women are not born but culturally fashioned was created to disrupt presumed binary essentialism, recognizing the constructed nature of gender and that way in which men and women are subsequently placed in a hierarchical and oppressive structure (131). Disrupting this structure will allow female bodies that are capable of interfacting with technologies in an equitable manner to male bodies to create the same cygnification, as the value created would be the same. For example, a female body can interfact with a jetliner in the same manner that a male body does. The plane does not care if the body behind the yoke is male or female; it will react equitably to either. Despite the ease with which a plane may be flown by either gender, a mere 5.12 percent of commercial airline pilots are women in the United States (Rossini and Carsenat 2014). Prejudice against female pilots remains strong, and women who want to form commercial airline pilot are forced to overcome numerous sociocultural obstacles in order to create the same exchange value as their male counterparts, even though their ability to interfact with the technologies required to form commercial airline pilot is equitable; there is a significant gap between the labor they perform and the value assigned to their ganmeme. A minor formative alteration to the cookie cutter is required to accommodate a slightly different formation without any alteration in performance, but it is a shift that our society has been reluctant to make. Since values are not only measured by dissimilar things with which they can be exchanged but also by similar things with things with which they can be compared, the value of a cyborg is likewise comparative. Saussure notes that words, for example, are not defined by what is in them, but rather by what is outside of them (de Saussure 1986, 114). We may not know for certain what is contained within the parameters of the dough outlined by our cookie cutter, but we do know that there are no white chocolate chips in it; they have been excluded from this particular cookie and are not in this specific section of the dough. Likewise, a female body who pilots a commercial airliner is assigned a lower value than that of a male body interfacting in a comparable manner. Linguistically, this is reflected in the usage of the gendered term “female pilot” as compared to the never heard “male pilot” to differentiate between the two, creating an artificial differentiation. An argument could be made that this is not an error of meaning but rather of spelling. After all, the ganmeme of a female body can be part of the spelling of commercial airline pilot. Recognizing that the body is female would seem to be a logical step. However, this is falling into the trap of a gendered language. Spanish, for example, has feminine and masculine words that are

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signified by a shift in the ending vowel. Teatro is considered a masculine noun because of the “o” at the end, while rosa is regarded as feminine due to final “a.” Neither the theater nor a rose has anything that may be considered inherently gendered, but an arbitrary decision was made linguistically at some point to assign gender to them; in a less-gendered language such as English, attempting to assign an inherent gender to a theater would be considered unreasonable and unnecessary. Assigning an arbitrary gendered value to a random word serves no inherent linguistic purpose that grants signification. Likewise, assigning a subjective value to a commercial airline pilot based on the gender of the body is no more rational than doing so based on hair color or if the person was born on a Thursday. Successful interfaction is not impacted by the genetalia; however, because our cy-syst has been inculcated with gender in a manner comparable to the Spanish language, we assign unnecessary values based on irrelevant factors. For example, teatro could just as easily be teatroa or perhaps even teatrœ. The value of the sign is comparable as it is still clearly recognizable. Once this superfluous gendered difference is removed, the value differential is then not measured between commercial airline pilot and female commercial airline pilot, an arbitrary distinction that creates little useful conceptual value, but rather with other cyborgs such as bus driver, subway conductor, and helicopter pilot. These values are relevant and create meaningful differential. The only conceptual value in which pointing out a gendered difference is when doing so highlights the disparities between genders; for example, highlighting the lack of female commercial airline pilots. An approach which considers commercial airline pilot as a separate consideration from female would be useful here. That is, the value of commercial airline pilot is not inherently influenced by female, as both of these are separate performatives that do not necessarily influence the other. Saussure raises an interesting point about the composition of a thing and how that relates to its value. He uses the example of a five franc coin containing less than half of that value in silver yet still maintaining the demarcated exchange value. The material composition of the coin is separate from the exchange value within the monetary system. A system of differences between the one, five, and ten franc coin including size, imprint, and weight are instead the factors chosen to represent value (de Saussure 1986, 117). In a like manner, the material compositions of cymemes are unrelated to the value accorded to them. A good example of this is diamonds. Diamonds are actually a very common stone, yet because of an incredible marketing campaign by the De Beers company, a value has been assigned to them that is disproportionate to their rarity or any other intrinsic quality of the material, hinging instead on a sociocultural cygnification of marriage. However, as Saussure

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notes, it is not the positive factors of a sign or a cyborg that characterize them, but rather the negative one; that is, “dog” is “dog” not because of its inherent traits, but because it cannot be mistaken for “cat,” “gerbil,” or “Australia.” Wedding rings for women are traditionally made of gold and have a center diamond; however, none of these are necessary for cygnification. As long as it is recognizable as a ring interfacting in the appropriate manner with a female body (in this case, located on the left ring finger), cygnification will take place. How does one recognize the ring as a cymeme intended to participate in the cygnification of marriage? It is not simply a matter of placement on the correct finger. A glove may cover that finger as well, but it would not be mistaken for a wedding ring. Nor would a ring made of hair on the ring finger. An actual wedding ring worn on the right index finger would also fail to create the proper cygnification. As such, neither the location on the left ring finger nor the material composition create positive properties to identify a “wedding ring”; instead, it is only when no other possible cymeme can be identified as “wedding ring” that the attribution is bequeathed. Growing up, I was raised in the Seventh Day Adventist Church (SDA), a conservative Christian denomination that frowned upon wearing jewelry, drawing upon Biblical strictures against capricious spending or self-adornment. Many couples, still desiring to cygnify their marital commitment to each other, would purchase luxurious matching watches instead. The justification for this alternative purchase was the practical applications of a watch: it serves a legitimate functional purpose as opposed to one that merely contributes to a personal aesthetic. Ironically, many of these watches were significantly more expensive than many rings, especially simple ones, as well as equitably gaudy, if not more so; they were made of gold, encrusted with diamonds, and carried designer names that added expense to the watch unrelated to its actual quality; a substantially less expensive timepiece would have fulfilled the functional task in a comparable, if not superior, manner. As far as creating a recognizable cymeme, this falls well short of an identifiable sociocultural marker. Since a cymeme is only recognizable not from its positive traits but from its negative ones, it cannot be readily identifiable as a different marker than one intended. There is a meme that shows a wizard attempting a spell written in cursive that appears to be titled “How to Summon a Demon.” When the spell is completed, he stands staring at a smiling citrus—the spell was actually “How to Summon a Lemon.” Though the letters possessed the positive traits of the “l,” there were not enough negative traits to successfully separate it from the “d.” Comparably, a watch (even an opulent one) does not have the prerequisite negative traits to separate it from “fashionable person wearing a watch.” Our culture does not recognize a watch on a wrist as part of a cygnification of marriage. In addition, the location of the wrist also

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precludes identification as lacking the proper spatial proximity; the specific interfaction of the watch on the wrist with the ganmeme further removes recognizable negative traits. This would be the equivalent of placing a “q” next to an “u” and trying to convince people that the word being formed is “marriage”; while the letters themselves may go together, neither the consonant nor the vowel are recognized as part of the composition of the word attempting to be created. The denomination has essentially created a cyborg that is only recognized within their insular community. Imagine if a subculture were to repurpose the word “ferriage” to signify “marriage.” Sentences such as “Ferriage is too expensive” or “Ferriage is stressful” become confusing, even within the subculture and certainly not understood by anyone outside of it. Ironically, they still have not created enough negative traits for it to be clearly identified even within that population, much less outside of it. Members of the church will not automatically look at someone wearing a fashionable watch and understand “marriage.” A ring-watch would probably be a more suitable cymeme as it is participating in a recognizable interfaction while still carrying the practical application desired by the community to help cygnify “functionality” as opposed to “luxury.” Saussure notes that the shape of the letter “t” is irrelevant to the sound pattern produced by the letter, and so too is the shape of a cymeme irrelevant to the observation pattern (de Saussure 1986, 117). A ring could just as easily be a spiral, a sheath, or a set of laces and the same observation pattern may be produced. These are aesthetic features to which an arbitrary association pattern has been assigned. Since the values are negative, a “t” may be shown as “t,” “t,” or “t” (de Saussure 1986, 118); in turn, the precise form of the ring may be any number of forms with a center stone, channel set, or even just a plain band. As long as it lacks ready identification as an observation pattern of another cymeme, such as a finger splint or glove fingers while simultaneously carrying enough identifiable traits of the “ring” cymeme, it will be readily classified as such. Lacking such readily identifiable markers would leave not only the cymeme adrift in a sea of values, but also the cyborg it was attempting to form. Marriage, lacking a single identifying letter, becomes much harder to identify as a sign; arriage leaves open the possibilities of alternative signification. Comparably, the aforementioned watch tradition of the SDA Church makes readily identifiable cygnifying values less apparent to the casual observer. While the value of the full sign may still be ascertained from context clues, in certain circumstances such context clues may be lacking. For example, in the sentence “After the ceremony, the family of the bride and groom went to the reception hall to celebrate their arriage,” discerning the values of the letter and the resultant word is a relatively simple proposition. However, if the sentence instead was “Jane Austen’s protagonists enjoyed their new arriage,”

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the lack of suitable context renders establishment of those values a challenging, if not impossible, proposition. Within writing, the limitations of the system usually allow simple identification of a given letter (de Saussure 1986, 118). There are only twenty-six possibilities in English, for example, and a given instance of a letter should be able to be whittled down to a couple of possibilities with little problem, even if is slightly sloppily constructed. However, unlike a relatively limited alphabetic system, a cy-syst is populated with hundreds, if not thousands, of technological cymemes. Like letters such as “r” or “t,” some technological cymemes are common and therefore, easily identifiable; “cars” likewise are commonplace in the formation of countless cyborgs and are readily distinguished. However, some letters may also be used less frequently, such as “x”; however, due to the limitations of the system, it is still readily identifiable and value may usually be assigned to it with little difficulty. Technological cymemes, on the other hand, come from a system that is, if not limitless, has only nebulous limitations. Spectrometer for the average person may be at best identified as something akin to complicated piece of scientific equipment. Lacking more additional context, trying to identify the precise cyborg that it participates in forming may result in a value that is either exceptionally broad or even undefinable. Despite the supposed fixity of an alphabetic system, it is important to remember that even these systems are mutable. Letter values change over time, as do the formation of letters. While these shifts tend to take longer than the those within a cy-syst, they are similarly inexorable. Saussure’s label of alphabets as a “fixed” system is thus a misapplication of the term. A more accurate representation would be that the measurement of values may only take place within a synchronic rather than a diachronic system. This is equally true in the case of cy-systs, if not more so. The rapid evolution of technology creates a system in flux, but still related to those that have gone before it, carrying relational values to their predecessors. As systems evolve, the composition of the inscription/fabrication may also be adjusted as technologies change. Saussure argues that the method of inscription does not factor into the interpretive act because of its negligible impact the system. He claims, “Whether I write in black or white, in incised characters or in relief, with a pen or a chisel—none of that is of any importance for the meaning” (de Saussure 1986, 118). For language, this claim is at best tenuous. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix provides an ideal instance to demonstrate the significance of inscription methodology. In this installment of the young wizard’s adventures, the benevolent headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, has been ousted from his post as headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry by agents working on behalf of the malevolent sorcerer Voldemort. Dumbledore’s replacement is

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the nefarious Delores Umbridge, a vicious woman who keeps order through harsh enforcement of an ever-expanding set of educational decrees, posted prominently on the wall of the Great Hall, nearly covering it like a patchwork tapestry of edicts. Our hero, Harry, persists in maintaining that the vile wizard Voldemort has returned from the grave despite the rules and repeated warnings from Umbridge to desist, attempting to save his classmates and the faculty from her enforced ignorance. In retribution, she assigns him detention, during which he is to write “I must not tell lies” until, in her phrasing, “the message sinks in.” Harry seats himself to write, but like the biblical Isaac, he quickly ascertains that something is missing. “You haven’t given me any ink,” he said. “Oh, you won’t need ink,” said Professor Umbridge with the merriest suggestion of a laugh in her voice. Harry placed the point of the quill on the paper and wrote: I must not tell lies. He let out a gasp of pain. The words had appeared on the parchment in what appeared to be shining red ink. At the same time, the words had appeared on the back of Harry’s right hand, cut into his skin as though traced there by a scalpel—yet even as he stared at the shining cut, the skin healed over again, leaving the place where it had been slightly redder than before but quite smooth. (Rowling 2003, 266–67)

Umbridge’s inquisitional torment becomes a nightly affair, and the repeated gouging of Harry’s flesh leaves streamers of blood trailing down his hand. The magical quill draws Harry’s blood into its shaft; the cost of Harry’s writing is measured in nightly pain and bloodletting. Through his unwilling sacrifice of blood and pain inscribed on the parchment, he is forced to signify his compliance to the educational decree written in ink; the ink provides a marked contrast to Harry’s blood as an inscription methodology. Whereas one is produced voluntarily with minimal discomfiture (if any at all, depending on the precise approach to creating it), the other utilizes a fluid required for life, extricated painfully from the body. The ink is used by those in power to indicate their will, while Harry’s blood indicates a forced compliance to that will. As his evening torments continue, Professor Umbridge inspects Harry to determine if her lesson is being learned. “‘Let’s see if you’ve gotten the message yet, shall we?’ said Umbridge’s soft voice half an hour later. She moved towards him, stretching out her short ringed fingers for his arm. And then, as she took hold of him to examine the words now cut into his skin, pain seared, not across the back of his hand, but across the scar on his forehead . . . ‘Yes, it hurts, doesn’t it?’ she said softly” (Rowling 2003, 275). Notice that when she checks to see if he has “gotten the message,” she is not inspecting his writing, but his arm; she is not checking on the inscription itself, but the method of

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inscription. The words that he is writing to indicate his acquiescence to her will are secondary to the productive method through which that writing is created. It is through the compliance to the forced tortuous inscription technique that the real signification is created. Of note is that the significance of the inscription methods is observed not only by Harry himself, upon whom the persecution is being enforced, but also upon those who observe it. Before long, Harry’s closest friend, Ron Weasley, notices the damage and confronts him about its importance. Harry, who had just scratched his nose with his free right hand, tried to hide it, but had as much success as Ron with his Cleansweep. “It’s just a cut—it’s nothing—it’s—” But Ron had grabbed Harry’s forearm and pulled the back of Harry’s hand up level with his eyes. There was a pause, during which he stared at the words carved into the skin, then he released Harry, looking sick. “I thought you said she was giving you lines?” Harry hesitated, but after all, Ron had been honest with him, so he told Ron the truth about the hours he had been spending in Umbridge’s office. “The old hag!” Ron said in a revolted whisper . . . “She’s sick! Go to McGonagall, say something!” “No,” said Harry at once. “I’m not giving her the satisfaction of knowing she’s got to me.” (Rowling 2003, 272)

As Ron observes, the lines, while frustrating and unfair, are not abhorrent; on the other hand, Ron recognizes the importance of the enforced utilization of Harry’s blood to achieve the writing. The signification behind the method of inscription is more important than what is being inscribed. While the written message “I must not tell lies” is both straightforward in its message and false in its verisimilitude, the meaning behind the inscription is even more insidious. While the writing insists on the writer conveying a message of false reality, the inscription mode is a threat of “Or else face consequences that cause you pain and threaten your life.” The authoritarian control of the headmaster over the person writing is etched in every letter, as she causes him to inscribe himself a liar not only on the page, but on his very flesh. While other students would not see the inscription itself, as these were collected by Umbridge at the end of every tortuous detention period, what would still be visible were the scars left on his hand following these sessions. In observing how he was forced to inscribe, the deeper signification would clearly be impressed upon them, compelling them to compliance upon fear of the same retaliatory methodology. It is the students’ witness not to the writing itself, but the mode of inscription, that Umbridge hoped would cause a secondary consequence of cowing the students beyond the immediate impact of silencing Harry.

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Such inscription methods do not just impact the inscriber in the immediate moment, but it can have lasting and permanent consequences. A year later, the new Minister of Magic, Rufus Scrimgeour, visits Harry to try to persuade him to assist in his efforts to reestablish the credibility of the Ministry of Magic after their clear public failings over the previous twelve months. Harry rebuffs Scrimgeour’s overtures, reminding him of the ministry’s disregard for both his message and his safety during the prior school year: “He raised his right fist. There, shining white on the back of his cold hand, were the scars which Delores Umbridge had forced him to carve into his own flesh: I must not tell lies. ‘I don’t remember you rushing to my defense when I was trying to tell everyone Voldemort was back. The Ministry wasn’t so keen to be pals last year.’” (Rowling 2007, 131)

Even after a year, the inscription consequences are obvious on Harry’s body, as is the meaning carried by the inscription mode. Harry’s revelation of the scars is not to show Scrimgeour the words themselves and their meaning, but instead the signification carried through the inscription technique. For cyborg semiotics, the values associated with inscription methods can have comparable meanings as with writing. In order for the inscription method to have such value, it is important that there is an audience to observe the method; had the other students not seen the scars on the back of Harry’s hand and understood what method was used to create them and why it was used, it would have had no impact. Michel Foucault describes the importance of an audience in observing the interfactions of technologies and bodies to create a cyborg in the punishment of criminals, stating, “Not only must people know, they must see with their own eyes. Because they must be made to be afraid; but also because they must be the witnesses, the guarantors, of the punishment, and because they must to a certain extent take part in it” (Foucault 1995, 58). Removing the observer from witnessing the inscription method is a disruption of the circuit of communication described by Saussure in chapter 1. Foucault demonstrates the significance of the observation of bodily inscription modes by describing the torture of a maid who used a cleaver to murder her mistress. In retaliation, the state decreed that she was to be slain using the same cleaver; not only was the same implement to be used, but the executioner was also to mimic the same strokes in the same sequence that she inflicted upon her victim (Foucault 1995, 45). The interfactions between her body (the ganmeme) and the cleaver (the techneme) create a cygnifying link between her body and that of her mistress. This cyborg is a reflection of the original cyborg through a glass darkly, a criminal act reflected under the jurisprudence of the state in the name of justice. The act harkens back to the

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biblical principle of an eye for an eye, justifying the barbarity of the state’s interfaction by reminding the audience of the horror of the actions of murderer. The state could have decided to execute her through strangulation, or it could have even chosen to kill her with a different edged instrument, such as an ax or a guillotine. However, neither of these methods of inscription upon the body would carry the same cygnificance as the original implement; an audience of the time, saturated in Christian theology such as the reciprocal principle of “an eye for an eye,” could not help but understand the importance of the inscription method. If the audience were unaware of the inscription used by murderer upon victim, then the full cygnificance of the state’s retaliatory inscription methodology would be lost on them. In order to initiate the process of transforming damaging inscription methods and the resultant cyborgs into ones that are more constructive, the ones using the harmful inscription methods must acknowledge not only the fact that they are injurious, but also that the detrimental nature of the methods are a negative. Both of these parts are often contested by those who use them in a harmful manner against oppressed groups. This transformation rarely occurs without public exposure to those who might shame them, providing negative feedback; if we return to our Harry Potter example, Harry’s friends encouraged him to reveal Umbridge’s torments to the Ministry or Dumbledore, someone with authority and power who might be able to respond and bring a halt to the sessions. An excellent example of this from a cyborg perspective is raised by Laura Mulvey in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Mulvey argues that “analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it. That is the intention of this article. The satisfaction and reinforcement of the ego that represent the high point of film history hitherto must be attacked” (835). Analysis, in this respect, must be regarded as a completion of Saussure’s circuit of communication; that is, while there is information being conveyed on a surface level from standard communication, analysis is a form of metasignification. Through this metasignification, the blood beneath the sleeve cuff is revealed. Mulvey argues that “[w]omen then stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic commands by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (834). Mulvey’s goal is the metacommunication of the damage caused to women by the enforcement of the theatrical tradition of signifying passive women on the screen. Mulvey’s attempt to break down the visual pleasure of watching a woman on a screen through the lens of scopophilic desire can have her desired effect because of the principles of embarrassment, shame, and pride as described by Thomas Scheff. According to Scheff, interactions between people require two systems. The first is a communication system. This type of system

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would include both linguistic systems as well as cyborg semiotics. The second would be deference-emotion systems. The communications systems are monitored by the deference-emotion systems to ensure that the individual participating is not diverting too far from the expected patterns. There are two selves participating in the interaction: the virtual self, comprised of the idealized expectations for the behavior of that self, and the real self, which is the individual’s actual behavior. Should that actual behavior deviate significantly from the idealized behavior in front of an audience, embarrassment will set in to regulate the gap between the two, an emotion most of us are conditioned to avoid (SAGE 2021, 1–2). While embarrassment is a social function that occurs between people, shame and pride are both emotions that work within people, though they are still the result of either strengthening or weakening the social bond, which we constantly monitor. Sheff states, There are three phases to this monitoring. First, we imagine what we look like to other people. It isn’t enough for us to know what we look like in a physical mirror; we have to know what that image looks like to others. . . . We put ourselves in their shoes and look back at our self. Second, we imagine how they feel about how we look. Do they like the way we look or not? Am I dressed and acting appropriately? And, then, third, we have an emotional response to their feelings. That emotional response is either pride or shame. (SAGE 2021, 2)

Mulvey’s quest, then, is to remove the audience from behind their artificial distance provided by both the camera and the darkened space of the theater and confront the fetishization of the eroticized passive female body on the screen in an unmediated fashion. Since cyborg semiotics is communication brought about through the interfactions of bodies and technologies, film is an obvious example of these interfactions to create cygnification. Drawing the audience into social psychology as described by Scheff in this manner forces it to not only look at themselves through other’s eyes, but to imagine how they look to the observer. If there is an expectation that social bonds will then be severed because of how they are viewed, shame will be invoked, which may then be either ignored, leading to anger and other symptoms, or acknowledged, which may then be discharged. Through the purging of acknowledged shame by audiences (as some filmmakers have attempted through controversial films such as Sucker Punch), change in signifying practices may be encouraged in film production. These gendered cybernetic inscription methods are often established early on and are enforced by parents. Judith Lorber and Lisa Jean Moore make this argument in Gendered Bodies: Feminist Perspectives. They maintain that parents restrict access to technologies to children based on their biological

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sex in order to reproduce culturally dictated gender norms. Boys get action figures, while girls get dolls. Not only that, but they are encouraged to play with them in a predetermined gendered manner: the action figures must fight while the dolls play house. Heaven forbid one should do the opposite with them. This is so inculcated into our psyche that clear deviations in an attempt to resist cultural norms may be overlooked (Lorber and Moore 2011, 61). While women actorsin many cases have at least agency in choosing whether or not to participate in the inscription that their bodies participate in, children have virtually none. They have almost no access to technologies outside of those that their parents are both willing and able to provide. While there may be some limited access in places such as schools, libraries, and friends’ homes, the vast majority of inscription tools they have will be provided by their parents. Like Umbridge, they will largely control whether those tools will be designed to be damaging or helpful, as well as whether the message itself will be true or false. Parents control access to toys, clothing, and other technemes that form gendered cyborgs (whether or not those cyborgs should be considered gendered). If a child wishes to form a gendered cyborg that differs from the one desired by their parents (usually the one culturally associated with the child’s biological sex), the parent can restrict access to the technemes necessary to form the cyborg. Much like Harry being forced to use a quill that damages his body to create a message that denies reality, the child will be confined to technemes that can only create a false message, one which will damage their identity. As mentioned by Lorber and Moore, children will often repurpose and subvert gendered toys to try to create cyborgs that hold their desired cygnification. These toys have a gendered history, as exemplified by the notorious “pink aisle(s)” in the toy store or the local Walmart. Advertising and marketing all conspire to point a child toward a gender identity corresponding with biological sex and to persuade parents to purchase toys that reinforce society’s normative ideals of that gender. Despite this pressure, Barbies may be made to karate chop each other while attempting to steal a diamond from a vault, and Hot Wheels can have a tea party, resisting the socially constructed value of the toy as parents have denied the child access to toys which were created with the values associated with cyborgs cygnifying the child’s desired gender. In doing so, they are becoming what Claude Levi-Strauss describes as a bricoleur. According to Strauss, the bricoleur’s universe of instruments is closed and the rules of his game are always to make do with “whatever is at hand,” that is to say with a set of tools and materials which is always fininte and is also heterogeneous because what it contains bears no relation to the current project, or indeed to any particular project but is the contingent result of all the occasions there have been to renew or enrich the

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stock or to maintain it with the remains of previous constructions or destructions. (Levi-Strauss 1966, 17)

Since the child’s selection of toys is limited, their technemes must serve a variety of purposes contrary to the intentionality behind them should a child wish to create cyborgs outside of their gender norms. While using Barbies in a boxing match is one possibility, it is far from the only one available to the creative young bricoleur. Clothes pins, AA batteries, or markers may all serve to create the desired cyborgs; as Levi-Strauss stated, these technemes are unrelated to the design of the current endeavor, yet since they are available to the bricoleur, they may be bent to form the desired cyborg. The goal of the bricoleur is self-expression. Levi-Strauss makes this point clearly, stating that the bricoleur “‘speaks’ not only with things, as we have already seen, but also through the medium of things; giving an account of his personality and life by the choices he makes between the limited possibilities” (Levi-Strauss 1966, 21). Levi-Strauss’s phrasing of speaking with and through things is an important part of the bricoleur, as it recognizes the limitations placed on the cyborg who is cygnifying against cultural expectations and how an individual in a position of power may attempt to either silence the speaker or force them to cyngify in a false manner, such as Umbridge did when forcing Harry to incorrectly signify that he was a liar. The bricoleur attempts to explain themselves through things, and parental resistance forces the bricoleur outside of standard cygnification. It is the linguistic equivalent of somebody wanting to type the word “girl” on a typewriter that has had the “g” and the “i” key removed. Parents may use a variety of tactics to either alter a child’s cygnification or attempt to silence them. One common method to deter undesired cygnification is ignoring the child’s desire for technemes that would allow them to create a cyborg parents consider to be gender nonconforming, even if the child largely cygnifies in a gender conforming fashion; a child who is biologically female that wants to use action figures to fight is not saying that she wants to be male, just that she wants to cygnify in a manner that has been arbitrarily assigned as masculine. Imagine a child with a food allergy to spinach with parents who persist on feeding them spinach at every meal, insisting that spinach is healthy for bodies and the child does not understand enough about what occurs with their own body to claim that they are suffering from indigestion. The child is not saying that spinach is inherently a bad food, just that it has a detrimental impact on their individual body. The abuse here is twofold, as it is not only the insistence upon providing only harmful sustenance to a child with no recourse to alternatives, but it also a dismissal of the child’s agency and voice, leaving them questioning their ability to represent themselves to others. Ignoring cygnification creates confusion and frustration, and the one

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cygnifying is duplicating patterns they see others receiving positive responses from observers; that is, the circuit of communication completes for others in reference to their self-identified gender, but not for them when they cygnify in the same manner as others. They will start to doubt their ability to cygnify adequately, which may lead to simply cygnifying in a false manner regarding their identity in order to be observed at all. Other than ignoring their children’s attempts at cygnification, another strategy used by parents who desire to shape their child’s interfactions into more gender conforming roles would be gender-shaming them through statements such as “That’s not what nice girls do” or “Real boys don’t play with dolls.” These statements attempt to re-form the child’s cygnification through a combination of embarrassment and shame. Embarrassment, as mentioned earlier by Scheff, is brought about when there is a gap between the virtual self, comprised of idealized expectations, and the real self, which is comprised of the actual behaviors of the individual. As Sheff states, “If we fail to live up to expectations, we will be embarrassed in front of others, something we are motivated to avoid. Goffman called the work we do to avoid and repair embarrassment ‘face work’ (2).” Parents shaping children into gender normative cygnification will set the idealized gender expectations for the child, forming the virtual self, and creating the gap with the real self. In an attempt to close the gap, children may try to put in face work, attempting to alter the real self through alternative gender normative interfactions, ignoring their desired cygnifications. In addition to creating embarrassment by altering the virtual self, parents may try to cause shame by threatening the social bond; as mentioned by Sheff, shame arises when we feel that how we are perceived by others threatens the social bond (SAGE 2021, 2). Parents may use a variety of phrases to encourage shame, such as “No son of mine is going to play with dolls” or “My daughter is not going to play rugby”; this second one is a phrase I heard more than once as a girls’ rugby coach in Oklahoma from parents whose son was at that very moment on the pitch banging heads with boys that were bigger, stronger, and faster than they were with absolutely no fear for their male progeny. The daughter would be interested in playing herself, but she would quickly tell me that there was no way that their parents would allow them to play. If they screwed up the courage to ask and their parents provided the expected denial, they would show the body language associated with shame: head down, eyes lowered, and shoulders slumped. Even the act of asking elicited the threat to the bond, as they were concerned over how their parents would respond within that relationship should they deviate from the expected gender interfactions. Conversely, daughters see the tightening social bond from success by the son when he offloads a tremendous pass or scores a try and wonder why they cannot receive the same pride from the

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same act because of their biological sex, a factor that is unrelated to their ability to interfact with the technologies of the game of rugby. This nonsensical dichotomy can cause confusion and feelings of inadequacy. Perhaps just as insidious, if not more so, is the shame associated with religion to shape interfactions. When raised within a church as the primary form of social relations (and thus, their own cygnification), children can be extremely sensitive to shame originating from the church. The more limited the social circle, the greater the threat from shame when one of those precious bonds is threatened. I would argue that this is one of the major advantages of public education, especially at the college level. By allowing for the creation of multiple social bonds outside of those to which parents limit their children, the potential for shame to be a motivating factor in creating cygnification is decreased since if one social bond is broken due to a rejection of forming certain cyborgs or variations of cyborgs, other social bonds may be substituted. Phrases such as “Good Christians don’t do that” or “We live in this world but we are not of it” are used to alter cygnification of church members by threatening the bond with the institution, and by extension, with members of the church. For example, should a pair of men wish to cygnify as family, not only may they lose established pride from the existing bond with members of the church, but they may also be shamed through shunning and rejection. (To be clear, I recognize that this is not all churches, just like it is not “all men.” I am speaking here of established patterns over centuries that still exist within many, if not most, mainstream denominations as well as nondenominational churches, especially those with evangelical predilections. I am also aware that this type of behavior is not limited to the religion of Christianity and is practiced by many religions around the world. As a former aspiring seminarian, I am simply speaking of that with which I am most familiar.) As devastating as this shame is, the dogma of Christianity has one more level of shame to use to control the cygnification of its members. Should a person cygnify in a manner considered unbecoming for a Christian, they will be told that they are separating from God Himself. The shame of this loss is devastating, and the consequences of this shattered social bond mean losing the relationship with not only the most powerful force in the universe and creator of everything, but also the source of all that is considered good. The consequences of cygnifying in a manner contrary to God is the loss of this relationship, losing a connection not only to the church, but also to all goodness. Since God is omniscient, one cannot interfact with cymemes even in private in a manner contrary to the church’s interpretation of proper cygnification, as God will complete the communication circuit whether or not the cygnifier intends for the message to be conveyed. Shame for one wishing to cygnify in a manner contrary to gender norms as preached by the church is

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therefore unavoidable, even in private, as omniscience ensures there will be an observer of the cygnifying act, threatening the social relationship with God. The next threat level of shame is to an implied future social relationship. Heaven and hell are portrayed as temporal eternities, allowing for permanent social relationships. However, should one deviate from the cygnifying practices as portrayed by the church, one will be relegated to hell, which (depending on the denomination) may be portrayed as either a place of eternal torment or the obliteration of the soul resulting in a permanent lack of awareness; however, should one cygnify in the proper manner, the reward of a bounteous heaven and eternal life with their holy loved ones awaits them. If one cygnifies in a manner that will eventually condemn them to hell, they not only lose their eternal life, but as a consequence, they lose an eternal relationship with those they love. The shame is not just in the present, but in an eternal future. The complexities of shame for improper gender cygnification within these structures threaten the social bonds of family, friends, God, and every future relationship a person can possibly have, even though interpretation of cygnification is arbitrary; this results in an ever-widening spiral of shame as multiple social bonds are threatened. Shame has often been used as a weapon to control members, forcing them into narrow gender roles according to temporally based cultural strictures. Since parents possess such a powerful amount of control over access to technemes, they set the expectations for proper cygnification early, creating cygnifying patterns just like they do with linguistic patterns. Compounded with the multiple layers of shame to restrict willingness to deviate from the expected cygnifying patterns, most children will fall into line with their parents’ beliefs. Children will physically embody those values enacted upon through their cygnification. As Lorber and Moore observe, “The patterns of gendered behavior not only become part of a child’s identity as a boy or a girl; they become embodied. The embodiment, or the physical manifestation and enactment of cultural and social norms, especially those that make bodies and body practices feminine and masculine, is a global phenomenon” (Lorber and Moore 2011, 62). While the evangelical wing of the Christian church provides examples of how these patterns are enforced, every culture has their own methods of creating gendered practices in their children. These inscription methods may be harmful, though children will still attempt to cygnify the culturally appropriate terms, reproducing the message they are expected to though doing so at the cost of their psyche. Just as Harry Potter writes the expected message, falsely verifying his identity, in a like manner, children may falsely cygnify their identity, avoiding cyborgs too closely identified with the expected cygnification of the opposite biological sex. If the message alone is read, then there may appear to be little wrong; they are merely

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cyborgs; however, doing so ignores the inscription methodology. This would be the equivalent of reading “I must not tell lies” and ignoring the fact that the words were written in blood. In our culture, children may try to hide both the fact of the blood composing the message as well as their rent hand (their outward symptoms in their cygnification and their internalized trauma), and as long as the damage remains hidden beneath the sleeve (trauma stays veiled by concealing practices) society is content to ignore the inscription methods (the practices that cause the trauma), unless they bleed on someone else (criminal activity, poverty, etc.). However, violent cygnification typically creates other violent cygnification. One person yelling will frequently lead to the other participant in the circuit responding in kind; if one member of a conversation is discussing wrestling, the other person attempting to discuss puppies is a bit of a non sequitur. This is especially true in the case of children, as parents set the tenor for communication in both conversations and other forms of significations. Gender roles, then, are hard for children to escape from. Gloria Anzuldua notes that within Hispanic culture, the circuit is replicated through the elimination of gentler emotions in men, a perceived sign of weak cygnification. She notes that “[t] enderness, a sign of vulnerability, is so feared that it is showered on women with verbal abuse and blues. Men, even more than women, are fettered to gender roles. Women at least have the guts to break out of bondage. Only gay men have had the courage to expose themselves to the women inside them and to challenge the current masculinity” (Anzuldua 1987, 106). The destruction of tenderness within biologically male children will alter the manner of interfaction with technology and the subsequent cygnification, which will be devoid of softer emotions, requiring the creation of cyborgs associated with hardness and violence. Patriarchal cygnification is not just enforced by parents or parochial institutions. Science has adopted many of the same androcentric tendencies, dismissing their prejudicial notions as simply “facts,” ignoring their own inscription methods in assuming such cygnification. Donna Haraway examines the early discussions among anthropologists about the foundations of successful early civilizations, which they maintained was based in the principle of man-the-hunter. This model underscores aggression and competition as the underpinning foundation of forming societies, not only in the past, but in the future as well. As such, every other human activity was simply a support for the hunter; since only men were (supposedly) permitted to cygnify as hunters by interfacting with hunting technology, all activity by women was simply in support of masculine activity (Haraway 1991, 86). The argument of man-as-hunter primacy did not go unchallenged. Nancy Tanner and Adrienne Zihlman countered this contention by claiming that females are just as involved with the creation and utilization of technologies

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as males; in chimpanzee tribes, for example, females are shown to be more involved in the processes of tool implementation, while males are focused on hunting. The adaptation to gathering was just as, if not more crucial, than hunting for the creation of successful societies. Tanner and Zihlman point out that “[g]athering was the early critical invention of hominids. Food-sharing with ordinary social groups of females and offspring (including male sharing with these groups) resulted. Digging sticks, containers for food, and above all, carrying devices for babies were extremely likely early technological innovations related to the new diet and sharing habits” (Haraway 1991, 40). These technological innovations did not just result in technological transformation but anatomical evolution (Haraway 1991, 40). Unfortunately, because this model did not contribute to the man-as-hunter paradigm, it was largely dismissed as irrelevant by the male dominated anthropological community, relegating women to supporting roles in cygnification; discourse in anthropological circles refused to acknowledge any other form of cygnification for women. Because of the inscription methodology, one created by women to meet the needs of women and, in turn, the needs of the larger cybernetic unit including men, children, and animals (dogs, beasts of burden, etc.) the resultant construct and cyborg will be different than male inscribed technologies. Additionally, androcentric anthropologic theories often take credit for cygnification created by women, essentially coloring gynocentric cyborgs with a masculine brush. One example of this androcentrification of a feminine inscribed cyborg revolves around the inclusion of “dog” as a cymeme in family. The saying “dogs are a man’s best friend” has been around for over a century, and dogs have frequently been regarded as crucial to the evolution of hunting, contributing to the man-as-hunter theory. The thought has been that dogs bonded with humans because they helped men hunt, and in turn, they also benefitted by participating in the spoils of the hunt. However, Chambers et al. point out the limited amount of direct observation of advantages to cooperative hunting, as there is a lack of clarity as to dogs’ utility in hunting (Chamber et al. 2020, 416). They analyzed three factors related to dog-human coevolution. The first was the personhood of dogs (PD), which included factors such as dogs have souls, dogs are family members, and dog burial and mourning. The next factor evaluated was dogs’ utility for humans (DUH), including components such as cooperative hunting, herding, and guarding. Finally, they studied humans’ utility for dogs (HUD), including feeding, ethnoveterinary care, and dogs allowed inside human houses (Chambers et al. 2020, 419). They concluded that there were no differences between men and women regarding DUH; both took equal advantages of the benefits of dogs for human functionality. However, when examining PD and HUD, there was a distinct difference between men and women, with the women having

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over double the influence on both of these factors as men (Chambers et al. 2020, 428). Women would use a variety of methods to interfact with these canine ganmemes to create smooth cygnification. For example, the women of the Munduruku tribe in the Amazon region of Brazil would treat dogs as if they were human children, including nursing them and placing them in their own hammocks alongside their other children (Chambers et al. 2020, 428). In the Middle East, the Rwala have their women feed dogs sour milk or scraps, and the dogs in turn guard the women and the camels. Consistently, while both men and women emphasize how dogs may benefit humans, women are more focused on being a benefit to dogs and treating them as if they were people. This interfaction makes the formation of cyborgs (family, village, tribe, etc.) in which dogs participate easier, as the dogs will be more likely to willingly participate in the cygnification. These alternative formations of such cyborgs that include “dog” as a critical ganmeme provide benefits to all organic cymemes participating, creating cyborgs that are more likely to be stable with smooth, translucent interfactions. Analysis outside of the man-as-hunter paradigm thus reveals alternative inscription methodologies that counter androcentric models of cygnification. Acknowledging that women use cybernetic inscription methods that have equal, if not greater, impact on the formation of cyborgs that permitted the formation of successful civilizations places value on feminine contributions that have gone largely unacknowledged in anthropological circles. Such acknowledgment also can guide our choice of inscription methods moving forward, since if only the man-as-hunter theory is considered formative for successful civilizations in the past, present and future cultures will look to this model as a guide as they attempt to build their own. Refusal to acknowledge women’s contributions to cyborgs of successful civilizations will result in eliminating them as contributors to formative inscription, and in turn, androcentric cyborgs will be created that have eliminated feminine ganmemes that have contributed to past successful cultures. Successive cultures will then struggle to succeed, lacking those crucial cymemes and the resultant cyborgs that cannot be created without women’s inscription methodologies. Without understanding the impact these cynification methods can have on the cyborg, the cyborg can be misvalued in the same manner as someone observing Harry’s bloody writing and reading it as if it was written in ordinary ink. Since, as Haraway notes, language creates reality rather than simply describing it (Haraway 1991, 78), a lack of acknowledgement of women’s prior contributions to inscription methodologies leads to a cy-syst without women meaningfully participating in inscription. Altering who participates in inscription will alter the inscription methodologies, which will ultimately change the cyborg itself. Over the last few years, for example, there has

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been tremendous pushback against the Chick-fil-A restaurant chain for their financial support of anti-LGBTQIA+ policies and organizations (predominantly conservative Christian ones). Recently, Burger King launched their own chicken sandwich, the Ch’King, with the intent of attracting customers who want a tasty piece of poultry on a bun but do not want to support an organization that consistently cygnifies in opposition to non-heteronormative folks; they will, in fact, be donating a portion of the proceeds to LGBTQIA+ organizations during Pride Month (this tactic, of course, opens them up to the legitimate criticism of businesses wrapping themselves in a rainbow flag during Pride Month and shedding it immediately afterward). The composition of the two sandwiches are going to be relatively similar (bun, chicken patty, condiments, etc.), so one will likely not have a massive flavor difference from the other (though both will claim to be more flavorful than their competition). The technologies involved (industrial ovens, burger wrapper, spatulas, etc.) will be similar. There will likely be a fair amount of overlap between the organic cymemes as well: predominantly young adults from middle to lower-class families. These sandwiches will not be substantially differentiated by either their flavor or the composition of their cymemes; these read comparably. However, the inscription methodologies of those creating the cyborgs will be assigned value that will change the interpretation of the cyborg itself. Something as simple as a chicken sandwich forms a cyborg that takes on meaning unrelated to either its flavor or its constituent cymemes. Diversity in cygnification raises issues of the critical theoretical positions raised by Saussure: difference. According to Saussure, difference is what creates language: In language itself, there are only differences. Even more important is the fact that, although in general a difference presupposes positive terms between which the difference holds, in a language there are only differences, and no positive terms. Whether we take the signification or the signal, the language includes neither ideas nor sounds existing prior to the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonetic differences arising out of that system. In a sign, what matters more than any idea or sound associated with it is what other signs surround it. The proof of this lies in the fact that the value of a sign may change without affecting either meaning or sound, simply because some neighbouring sign has undergone a change. (de Saussure 1986, 118)

Difference in both sound patterns and in concepts (both the signifier and signified) permit the creation of comprehensible signs. However, what precisely constitutes a difference as well as the degree of disparity necessary to qualify as “difference” are both variables that differ between language and cy-systs; both are constructed concepts, not inherent factors.

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These variables are impacted by the signifiers or signifieds around them. If an English speaker is having a conversation with a friend from a non-English speaking country and they use a word that has a phoneme resembling a clicking sound, the English speaker may default to a “c” or a “k” for that sound; there is no recognizable phoneme for the sound provided. Conversely, if the sound pattern instead closely resembles multiple patterns, then it may be assigned to any of the other variants. Neither the pattern being used nor the origin pattern have been altered, but the interpretation will be altered due to the presence or absence of surrounding patterns. Obviously, the role of difference will create comparable problems with interpretation in cy-systs. If sounds are undifferentiated, then erroneous interpretations may occur. If someone stated, “The zipper is broken” but due to the sound proximity of “z” to “s” an interpretation of “The sipper is broken” occurs, a subsequent miscommunication regarding the body of a poor Englishman at afternoon tea transpires as opposed to the condition of his trousers. The closeness of the sounds provides only a small amount of difference, and, should the value of the sound fall between their defined sounds, difficulties arise in determining the proper phoneme, creating problems in identifying the subsequent sign. Within cy-systs, lack of cultural differentiation between various cymemes and borgmemes can lead to comparable miscommunications. One way that undifferentiated borgmemes may be created is when traditional sociocultural rules of cybernetic phonetics are disregarded. Anne Balsamo addresses how this type of undifferentiation factors into the interpretation of female bodybuilders. She comments, To be both female and strong implicitly violates traditional codes of feminine identity. Thus women who use bodybuilding technology to sculpt their bodies are doubly transgressive; first, because femininity and nature are so closely aligned, any attempt to reconstruct the body is transgressive against the “natural” identity of the female body. Second, when female athletes use technology to achieve physical muscularity—a male body prerogative—they transgress the “natural” order of gender identity. (Balsamo 1995, 43)

The dual transgression here of traditional cyborg phonetics creates multiple opportunities for undifferentiated observation patterns, creating opportunities for miscommunication. The first transgression, that of reconstructing the female body against its “natural” state, takes as its warrant that a “natural” state exists for women’s bodies; this also implies that either men’s bodies may be modified without transgressing its natural state or that modification of men’s bodies is natural. This warrant is comparable to assuming that there is a singular phonetic possibility from a given letter. For example, the letter “i”

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without the accompaniment of other letters is culturally assigned a singular sound, as in the word “I”; however, assuming that this is its “natural” sound denies the possibility of the variety of sounds created by the letter as found in tick, pupil, believe, onion, or innoxious. The idea of altering a phoneme from its base state is not considered transgressive or shocking, especially a vowel—neither should altering the observation pattern of a ganmeme. This supposed transgression is closely related to the following one: the alteration of the original feminine ganmeme through the use of technologies that are commonly associated with masculine ganmemes. This would be the equivalent of creating a signifier using the letter combination “qi.” Linguistic purists might insist that this letter combination is not a permissible construct in the English language, and yet such words exist, such as faqir or qiviut. While not as common as “qu,” the combination of “qi” is still regarded as valid and useful linguistically. Signifiers may easily be formed using them, though someone unfamiliar with this letter combination may require a moment’s adjustment to become accustomed to it and understanding how to pronounce it properly. Balsamo commented on the journey of one particular female bodybuilder who was roundly criticized for, according to her critics, becoming a man. While certainly not condoning the usage of steroids (a technology used by many bodybuilders to add mass and reduce fatigue), the traits regarded in a negative manner that she gained from this interfaction included rippling muscles, a heightened temper, and not being a “soft creature” (45). Many of these traits, should they be acquired by a man, would generally be regarded in a positive manner; the negativity leveled at her was not for the damaging effects the steroid had on her body, but instead that she was losing her so-called “intrinsic” femininity. Due to the perceived gap in differentiation between all “feminine” cyborgs and the cyborgs related to bodybuilding being considered masculine, the composition of the cyborg bodybuilder incorporating a female body as a ganmeme is rejected by many as valid since they perceive a clear differentiation between cyborgs possessing a feminine ganmeme and cyborgs associated with bodybuilding. However, there is no necessity for such differentiation to exist. In English, the word inquire is common and easily recognizable. Yet enquire is also identifiable as a comparable signifier with the same signification. Two different signifier compositions forming the same signified does not detract from either signifier or lessen its ability to signify. Nor does having two signifiers prevent a reader from being able to readily identify both as creating a very similar identifiable sign. Adding the possibility of a female body participating as a ganmeme in the creation of an observation pattern encroaches upon conceptual areas previously occupied only by male bodies. Much like gendered words, altering the composition of the construct to one containing a feminine ganmeme still creates a recognizable cyborg. The original construct with a

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male ganmeme does not lose conceptual space; its cygnification area remains the same. Instead, the construct with a female ganmeme simply overlaps the same cygnification without detracting from the original. Though distinctiveness is lost, the area of conceptualization is not. The lack of distinctiveness, however, does not detract from its functionality in cygnification, either as an independent unit or in forming narratives. Frankly, determining that a female ganmeme should not participate in bodybuilder is just a ridiculous as denying any male body access to the formation of this cyborg based on factors unrelated to its ability to interfact with the appropriate technemes. A wide variety of bodies may function as ganmemes within this cyborg, including both males and females, Middle Eastern or African, tall or short, and so forth; the only requirement to form the cyborg is the ability to adequately interfact with the technemes in a recognizable manner. Those who attempt to deny that these bodies are participating in forming the desired cyborg are demonstrating that they do not recognize that cyborgs can have multiple potential formations within observation patterns, much like words can have multiple potential phonetic structures within their sound patterns. Unfortunately, the rejection of the formation of these cyborgs is also the rejection of the communicative act. When these cyborgs-selves are denied comparable values despite adequate formation of the construct, those attempting to form the cyborgs will doubt their ability to communicate effectively, even if they are interfacting with the technological and biological cymemes more effectively than those whose bodies are more traditionally associated with that particular cyborg-self. The logical flaw in the decision to reject these cyborgs is easily exposed through an examination of an inversion of the protestation that a female cymeme cannot adequately form the cyborg bodybuilder. The purported duality between male and female bodies is at the heart of this argument, with only one acknowledged as part of the natural construct. Instead of contrasting the ganmemes, the duality between the technemes may be scrutinized. The two most common forms of weights are free weights and weight machines. Different bodybuilders may advocate for one over the other, though proponents of either would not argue that those who prefer the other are not adequately cygnifying bodybuilder. The interfactions between the bodies and the technologies are recognizable regardless of which type of techneme is participating in forming the construct. In fact, random technological items such as vehicles, milk jugs, or large rocks may even be used as part of a training program; the slight alteration in techneme does not prevent ready recognition of the cyborg. In a like manner, altering a few organic parts from those possessed by a commonly culturally accepted normative body participating in the cyborg does not change the clear cygnification created by the interfaction of the cymemes forming the construct. Unless necessary for identification

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purposes within the specific context of differentiation, one does not automatically regard the average bodybuilder as specifically free weight bodybuilder or weight machine bodybuilder, much less tall bodybuilder or short bodybuilder. In like manner, there is no cause to specifically differentiate female bodybuilder (or male nurse, for that matter) unless their gender identity is relevant to the immediate observation and relationships to other cyborgs.

Chapter 5

Cyborg Grammar and Relationships

The relationships between signs are broken down along two lines: associative and syntagmatic. Both signs and cyborgs relate to each other in these two manners, requiring different mental processes and forming different types of values. The associative relationships between linguistic systems and cy-systs are comparable and do not require much in the way of nomenclature differentiation; however, syntagmatic relationships differ greatly. As such, syntagmatic relationships within cy-systs will be referred to as cyntagmatic. In language, syntagmatic relationships are created through the sequence of the words either spoken or in writing. Saussure explains that “[w]ords as used in discourse, strung together one after another, enter into relations based on the linear character of languages. Linearity precludes the possibility of uttering two words simultaneously. They must be arranged consecutively in spoken sequence” (de Saussure 1986, 121). Unlike signs that are spoken in a sequential order or printed in neat lines on a page, cyborgs lack the clear sequential nature of their linguistic counterparts; however, this does not mean that principles of linearity are not still applicable to cyborgs. Just as two signs may not occupy a physical place on the page or two spoken words may not be spoken simultaneously without a blurring of the sounds, two cyborgs may not occupy the same physical space. They may interfact with each other, but they remain distinct physically as well as conceptually. Even though one cyborg may not occupy the same space as another (two ganmemes may not occupy the same space, though they may be very closely adjacent), cyborgs will inhabit each other, like nesting dolls. Cyborgs live in a gyre, circling each other in an ever-widening expanse. Bodybuilder is its own cyborg, occupying a certain space. However, it may also exist inside gym, participating it its cygnification though not filling its entire space; it lives within a small part of it, forming a portion of its cygnification. Likewise, gym envelopes bodybuilder, surrounding it without fully containing it. Comparably, 119

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mother often resides within family; in times past, family fully encompassed mother, preventing it from adequately cygnifying outside of itself, especially in the absence of father. Larger gyres require the space of smaller cyborgs and/or borgmemes to form themselves, though the exact conceptual space of the constituent borgmemes may have some variations. In many cases, it is useful to regard these larger cyborgs as compound words, often consisting of anywhere from a couple to numerous smaller borgmemes and cyborgs. The expanding gyre of cygnification winds outward, circling the smaller cyborgs without fully containing them, adding their biological and technological distinctiveness to the larger cyborg. Like a gyre, they are encircled, but as a two-dimensional line surrounds a three dimensional object; there is more to the object than that being contained by the line. As with compound words, the constituent cyborgs frequently retain much of their own values when participating in the larger cyborg, though often they become blurry, much like attempting to view individual trees in a sprawling forest. The observer is aware that individual trees exist within the forest, but focusing on any one of them draws attention away from the forest itself. Regarding the forest, the trees (and assorted plants, animals, insects, etc.) are participants in granting the forest its existence. The intricacies of connectivity between cyborgs may vary in the same manner as compound words. Alfred Rosa and Paul Eschholz differentiate between how various types of compound words are structured, “Some compound words are two separate words (half brother); some are one word (stepmother); and some are two or more hyphenated words (half-moon, father-in-law)” (Rosa and Eschholz 2008, 223). Each formative word loses varying degrees of its own signification as it is wrapped into the larger sign, blurring them together. These signs may be separated; however, extracting one from the other may become increasingly difficult depending on how tightly knit together they are. This connectivity is often (though by no means always) indicated by the lack of proximity to each other. In the first example, for instance, half and brother are easily extricated from the larger sign. They largely maintain their individual signification even while participating in the compound sign, with the concepts of half and brother retaining almost all of their original signification. Father-in-law decreases the space through the use of hyphens; frequently (though not always), these hyphens indicate an increased blurring of signification between the constitutive words. Father still indicates a male progenitor—kind of. After all, the person signified bears no genetic connection to the person with whom the relationship is being established. And there are currently no strictures establishing a mandatory legal connection between the parties. The signification of the signifiers involved have drifted and merged from their original meanings.

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Compound entanglement is not limited to signs; cyborgs are equally susceptible to a blending of cyborgs that start to blur the individual cygnification of the component cyborgs. Mother, for example, was for countless centuries subsumed by family, her ability to cygnify outside of the larger cyborg severely limited; she was obscured with it, expected to cygnify only in conjunction with husband and children. Her ability to cygnifiy depended upon the recognition of the larger cyborg’s cygnification; without it, her self-cygnification was, if not unrecognizable, at the very least distorted. The heteronormative cygnification allowed no room for variance; any cygnification outside of this standard was considered an aberration and deviant. De Beauvior observes the strife faced by single women and mothers in particular in creating a socially acceptable cygnification, while single men (even fathers) faced no such obstacles in crafting suitable cygnification: A woman alone, in America even more than in France, is a socially incomplete being, even if she earns her living; she needs a ring on her finger to achieve the total dignity of a person and her full rights. Motherhood in particular is respected only in the married woman; the unwed mother remains an object of scandal, and a child is a severe handicap for her. For all these reasons, many Old and New World adolescent girls, when interviewed about their future projects, respond today just as they did in former times: “I want to get married.” No young man, however, considers marriage as his fundamental project. (de Beauvior 2011, 444)

The cygnification of mother, as noted by de Beauvior, is only considered acceptable when participating in family. Like the word in-law feels awkward as a word unless it is connected to a second word such as sister or father, mother as a cyborg was made to feel incomplete unless it cygnified in conjunction with husband; it did not have valid cygnification unless it participated in the larger cyborg. Imagine a sentence that read, “My in-law went to the store and bought a gallon of milk.” The reader will expect some type of clarification as to who the subject of the sentence is in relation to the speaker. The sign in-law independent of additional signification feels incomplete, broken. As such, it would likely be questioned as adequate signification by the reader, who will view the writer as incapable of producing proper signs. Mother independent of family has likewise been regarded as requiring additional cyborgs to contain its cygnification; it has been accused of being unable to adequately cygnify on its own without the supporting organic cyborg of father in particular as part of family. Father, on the other hand, requires no additional cyborgs to consider it complete. The male borgmeme requires only the creation of a child and has not required proximity to other ganmemes or shared technemes to maintain its cygnification.

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In linguistics, the most common syntagmatic unit is the sentence (de Saussure 1986, 122). Sentences position sequences of words spatially on a page or a screen that are read temporally for written language, while verbal language organizes the words into a spoken sequence that is experienced temporally by the listener. Spatial proximity and temporality thus form the basis for the recognition of a syntagmatic unit in language. If spoken words are uttered too far apart from each other temporally, they will be unrecognizable as a syntagma; likewise, should words be placed far apart from each other or in a jumbled sequence on a page, they will also be dismissed as a valid syntagma. The proximity requirement for valid syntagma thus requires a recognizable distance between the signs involved to name them as a syntagma. Cyntagmas, the cyborg equivalent to the syntagma, also require spatial and temporal proximity, though proximity in cyntagmas function differently than with language. While physical proximity may be a strong indicator of participation in cyntagma, it is not necessary; instead, the important factor is the ability to form meaningful connections. Modern technology has allowed for a greater physical distance while still creating cyntagmas; in fact, temporality becomes less important as well when dealing with cyntagma formed digitally. Levy discusses an example of the insignificance of traditional spatial proximity in creating a cyntagma when factoring in digital cymemes: In the winter of 2004, an eighth-grade girl at Horace Mann, one of the top private schools in New York City, made a digital recording of herself masturbating and simulating fellatio on a Swiffer mop. She sent the clip to a classmate she liked, and in a show of gallantry that could only come from a teenage boy, he promptly broadcast the clip to all of his friends. Soon after, someone with the screen name “nyprivateschool” posted the entire thing on Friendster, a Web site where people of all ages can put up their own profiles, link to their friends, meet their friends’ friends, and form expanded online communities. After the digital video went up on Friendster, people started calling the school “Ho Mann” and referring to the incident as Swiffergate. As for the eighth-grader, like Paris Hilton before her, the dissemination of her amateur porn swiftly resulted in a major uptick in her level of popularity and celebrity. (Levy 2006, 141)

The initial infaction between the girl and the technology created a cyborg that she in turn shared with her desired beau over a digital connection. Pre-digitalera technology, sharing this cyborg would have necessitated either delivering a photograph in person or through some other delivery mechanism, such as the mail. Pre-photography, observing such a cyborg would require even closer proximity, either through a drawing or painting (necessitating time and proximity for posing) or simply being together and revealing the desired cyborg to the observer. Because of digital technology, this cyborg ended up part of a larger cyntagmatic unit than intended by the cyborg’s inscriber. Once

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the cyborg was created and shared, unintended cyborgs interfacted with it, creating cyntagmatic sequences with meanings deviating from that which the inscriber desired, both debasing and praising the original cyborg. This alteration would be comparable to inserting a noun into the wrong Mad Lib with a word that has the opposite meaning from the one the inscriber thought they were placing it into, undermining the intended meanings and values. Just as important as spatial proximity is the sequential temporal experience of a cyntagma. If the words of a sentence are experienced in a random order, comprehending them as a syntagma may be impossible as the jumbled mess would render the words either meaningless or even create meaning other than the one intended. For example, if the intended words of a sentence should read, “She picked up her dog before going into her office to meet with her boss” experience a slight sequential change, “She picked up her boss before going into her dog to meet with her office” a very different meaning is created. Should the sequence break down even further, such as “Picked her into up dog meet she her office with going boss before her to,” meaning fails completely; the temporal experience of the attempted syntagma fails to create cohesive concepts in English. The qualifier “in English” is important, as the structure of sytagmatic units vary from language to language. The base structure of syntagmas in English is subject-verb-object, or S-V-O. This order has nothing special or unique about it that makes is preferable to any other order; any number of other organizational structures can (and in other languages, are) be used. Written in Yoda-speak, this sentence is. Easy to understand, it also is. Despite the slightly deviant sentence structure from S-V-O order, the previous two sentences are relatively easy for a reader to decode; the majority of the supporting structures remain, allowing recognition of the syntagma’s meaning. A few signs within the structure needed alteration or addition in order to retain meaning; for example, a comma is now required for “proper” construction in the Yoda-speak sentence. A minor alteration from standard sentence construction does not diminish the meaning of the sentence; in fact, as writing instructors, we encourage our writers to use a variety of sentence structures to avoid monotony, though we still want them to create recognizable patterns so that meaning can be decoded. Creating a temporal experience to understand the sytagma is important for controlling narratives. Just like words are physically arranged on a page in a particular order to control the sequence in which words are experienced temporally, cyntagmas are also arranged physically to dictate the temporal sequence in which the cyborgs comprising it are experienced. For example, upon entering a business such as a gym, the first cyborg encountered is a reception desk with a receptionist. Frequently, off to the sides are changing rooms. The equipment is behind the reception desk, with the manager’s office

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in the back. When someone enters, they are welcomed, change into their clothes that indicate that they are participating in workout, actively engage in the workout, and encounter the manager only should there be a problem. The narrative of the experience is largely dictated by the physical arrangement of the cyborgs within the space. This narrative can be disrupted, of course; by entering it from a different portal and traversing it in an altered path, the cyntagma reads differently. This alteration does not necessarily change the meaning of the cyntagma any more than changing the word order within a sentence does as long as the base structures remain intact; for example, “I went to the gym with grim determination” is not too different from “With grim determination, I went to the gym.” While it might make for a more confusing experience while traversing the cyborgs in an altered pattern, meaning may still be made from the sum of the cyborgs. For example, if one were to start in the dressing room, move to the manager’s office, then through the equipment before passing through the reception area, one would still be able to discern that what they were experiencing was a gym, though it might take a little longer, much like having a misplaced subject in a sentence. However, if there was an organization such as a software development company that had an on-site gym, traveling through that gym first and then the cafeteria followed by a reception area might make the task of understanding precisely what the meaning of this cyntagmatic unit was in a comparable manner to attempting to decode a sentence with all of the words completely rearranged. Cyntagmatic relationships are active, alive, and evolving. As the observer moves through spaces and times, the interfactions between cyborgs will evolve and change. Saussure notes, “Syntagmatic relationships hold in praesentia. They hold between two or more terms co-present in a sequence” (de Saussure 1986, 122). Like syntagmas, cytagmatic relationships are always present, always in the moment. They are born, live, die, and spring back to life like a phoenix, new cyborgs rising from the ashes of the old, twisting around each other as they weave through the ether of meaning. Just like new words in a conversation replace old as they move through time, so to do cyborgs fade away with new cyborgs being created. However, unlike syntagmatic relationships, Saussure observes that associative relationships present in absentia; that is, they are relationships that exist mentally between signs possessing commonalities and are not necessarily currently in proximity to each other or following sequentially. Saussure explores two types of associative relationships: those based on common elements within the signifier and those that share common conceptual bonds between the cygnifieds. While some signs have both conceptual and compositional connections, only one is needed to form an associative link (de Saussure 1986, 124). Cygnification mimics signification in that associative links may be either compositional or conceptual.

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Associative elements grounded in compositional elements may occur when cyborgs share common cymemes and/or borgmemes. Kindergarten, elementary school, high school, and college share common formative elements such as “learning materials,” “teacher,” and “student.” These common elements are all found in what might be regarded as educational institutions. However, “learning materials” may be found within automotive dealership to instruct new salespeople, arcade to teach gamers how to play a video game, or home to (unsuccessfully) try to educate me about programming the clock on my microwave. Commonality of composition does not equal common cygnification. In like manner, while the suffix “-ing” may indicate a common signification, as in writing, singing, or basking, “ing” does not automatically indicate that the suffix is being formed; ring, wing, and bling all share the compositional components of the suffix without the suffix’s signification. In fact, singing repeats -ing with one carrying the signification of the suffix and the other one lacking it. Conversely, a lack of a common component while possessing related concepts may still create associative relationships between both signs and cyborgs. Rabbi, minister, imam, and priest are all local level religious leaders within monotheistic religions, and yet they lack any inherent structural commonality within their signs; there are no morphemes among these words that overlap. Despite this lack of common meaningful components, they have a clear conceptual cohesion allowing for the formation of an associative relationship. Cyborgs can display this same type of conceptual connection while lacking common cymemes or borgmemes between them. The associative relationship of “retail business” provides an excellent example of this lack of affiliation between components and meaning. Consider auto parts store, book store, and antiques store. Especially with advent of internet technology, these businesses may not share a single technological cymeme. Auto parts store may be located within a strip mall in a large, open space. All of their wares are on display except for overstock, and transactions are conducted on multiple electronic cash registers. Book store, on the other hand, sells none of the same products as auto parts store, and may be located in a standalone structure such as an older remodeled home, much of their inventory may be in storage due to lack of shelf space, though available through online outlets, and their transaction system might consist of a mechanical register or even a cash box and manual credit card machine. Antique store may lack a physical storefront completely, selling exclusively through an online outlet such as their own website or through an internet service such as Etsy. No registers would exist in this case, with all transactions conducted virtually, and cash would not be exchanged. Customers would be unable to view the actual items, instead relying upon virtual images to determine whether or not an item is desirable. While auto parts store is selling almost exclusively new items and book store

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may be selling primarily (though not necessarily exclusively) lightly used merchandise, antique store is focused on selling older, previously used products. About the closest common techneme shared between these cyborgs is “money,” but this is also a technology that is also shared by cyborgs such as government, church, and family, none of which would fall into the associative connection of “retail business.” Even that techneme may differ in composition between a business that accepts cash and checks and others that rely on electronic transfers; for example, antique store may only accept electronic transactions while book store conducts largely cash transactions. Within associative relationships, the sequence or totality of the cymemes bears little impact on the meaning of the individual sign. This is contrary to how syntagmas function, in which the meaning of the individual sign is directly connected to both sequence and summation. Saussure notes, The first thing that strikes us in this organisation are the syntagmatic interdependences. Almost all linguistic units depend either on what precedes or follows in the spoken sequence, or else on the successive parts of which they are themselves composed. . . . The whole depends on the parts, and the parts depend on the whole. That is why the syntagmatic relation between part and whole is just as important as the syntagmatic relation between one part and another. This is a general principle, which call be seen to operate in all the types of syntagma previously listed. There are always larger units, composed of smaller units, with a relation of interdependence holding between both. (de Saussure 1986, 126)

In short, in order to understand a given sign within a syntagma, equal weight must be given both to the components of the individual sign and the signs surrounding it, as well as the order in which the units and signs appear. Consider the syntagmatic unit “The sister took their brother to school.” In this sentence, the sign sister differs from the sign brother because of “sist” versus “broth,” though they share the morpheme “er.” Within the units, the differentiation between the morphemes “broth” and “sist” permit delineation between the signs, while the sequence of the morphemes create the desired constructs that denote gender identity. If the sequence of the morphemes was altered, for example, ersist, the sign is lost completely and meaning evaporates. In addition to morpheme sequence, the sequence of the signs within the syntagma is equitably critical for meaning. If instead the sequence “The brother took their sister to school” appears, then not only will a different person be behind the wheel, but a different person will also be entering the school. Another possible sequence would be “The brother took school to their sister,” in which case questions arise such as how big of a semi they are

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driving and if the children are still in the classrooms during transport. The sequence of signs will determine the signification of the full syntagma. Observers interpret cyntagmas sequentially as well. If a woman gets married, moves in with her husband, has intercourse, gets pregnant three years later and becomes a mother, the sequence is traditionally interpreted in a positive light; this cyntagma creates the image of a virtuous woman who follows the proper conventions of womanhood. All of the cyborgs in this sequence (marriage, moves in, intercourse, etc.) are interpreted according to the sequence in which they occur. If the sequence were to change, the overall interpretation of the cyborgs with the cyntagma would traditionally be viewed differently as well. For example, if the sequence instead was intercourse, pregnant, mother, then three years pass before move in and subsequently marriage, all the same cyborgs are involved in the cyntagma, but due to the change in the order, the cyntagma itself will usually be interpreted differently, ranging from slutty or loose to irresponsible and immoral. Not a single cyborg within the syntagma has changed, but due to the sequencing, the meaning is radically altered. While Saussure maintains that all signs are, at least to a certain degree, arbitrary, he also recognizes that some signs are less motivated than others. This is especially identifiable within sytagmatic units. Saussure uses the example of the unmotivated French word vingt (“twenty”) and contrasts it to the French word dix-neuf (“nineteen”). Whereas the first term is unmotivated, the second is less so. It evokes associative relationships of its component parts; dix functions in much the same way that -teen would call to mind other terms in the sequence of numbers after twelve and preceding twenty, whereas neuf recalls other words containing nine (twenty-nine, one thousand two hundred forty-nine, etc.). As it is composed of other words, the associative relationships evoked by those words lessens the arbitrariness of the sign. Within cyntagmas, the connection of constituent cymemes with associative terms during a time of cultural transformation can create conflicts of meaning for cyborgs. A recent example is the fight for marriage equality. Proponents of marriage for same-sex couples argue that marriage should be applied equitably to any consenting couple, regardless of gender or genitalia. Much like twenty is considered to be unmotivated and without associate influence of meaning, so too should marriage be applied to any couple who consensually participates in an intended lifelong commitment to each other. Detractors, however, argue that even if such a relationship is permitted, the addendum cyborg of gay must be added to it under all circumstances, in the manner of the sign twenty-nine. The cyntagma must contain reference to gender composition of the participants of the couple in order to invoke the negative associations they have placed on members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and thus the cyborg gay itself. This insistence upon the additional cyborg is

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both ridiculous and hurtful, and hopefully, will one day fall off like a vestigial tail. There is no comparable term such as gay eating, gay motorcycling, or gay swimming. The sole purpose of delineation through the insistence upon the additional cyborg is forcing the negative culturally associated cyborgs to the forefront for purposes of detraction and mitigation; they must be viewed as less than. The rules that govern these types of syntagmatic relationships within language are termed “grammar.” As Saussure notes, Static linguistics, or the description of a linguistic state, may be termed grammar in that very precise sense, by no means uncommon, found in expressions like “the grammar of chess,” “the grammar of the stock market,” etc. These are all cases of complex systems, involving coexisting values. Grammar studies the language as a system of meaningful expression. “Grammatical” implies “synchronic” and “meaningful.” (de Saussure 1986, 133)

Within this definition, then, the cyborg marriage being restricted to a formation constituting an individual adult male body and individual adult female body and prevented from forming meaning with other cyborgs such as IRS for tax purposes or parent regarding child care is a temporal, synchronic function of cybernetic grammar, as is the predication of the cyborg gay should the bodies forming marriage be of the same gender. That is, the insistence upon this formation is a product of the current time, not an intrinsic characteristic of the formation of marriage. Saussure describes the primary function of grammar as dictating the relationship between units, especially those that occur within sytagmatic sequences (though he does acknowledge that such relationships may occur within individual units). While this description is somewhat useful, it is somewhat limited and fails to account for the variety of utilization of the term in grammar studies. The former director of the Commission on Reading for the National Council of Teachers in English (NCTE), Constance Weaver, describes four primary definitions of “grammar”: • • • •

Grammar as a description of syntactic structure Grammar as prescriptions for how to use structures and words Grammar as rhetorically effective use of syntactic structures Grammar as the functional command of sentence structure that enables us to comprehend and produce language (Weaver 1996, 2)

All of these definitions of linguistic grammar apply equitably for cybernetic grammar, and they are all worth exploring in extensive detail. However, a full exploration of cyborg grammar, its systems, and the ways in which it is

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taught both formally and informally would require an entire text in of itself, involving questions such as the differences between transformative and functional cybernetic grammar. As such, I will confine myself to a relatively brief overview of cybernetic grammar. Weaver’s first definition of grammar, labeled as descriptive grammar, simply depicts how words interact to create meaning in common usage. It lacks didacticism, neglecting to enforce the way in which meaning should be formed, and instead chooses the role of humble scribe, observing and recording how words interact to create meaning within a culture. There is no desire for improvement or control; instead, descriptive grammar chooses acceptance and nonjudgmental examination. In a cybernetic sense, this type of grammar would observe the meaning created by a committed relationship in a same-sex couple and say, “Yes, of course that’s a marriage.” Prescriptive grammar is Weaver’s second sense of grammar. Whereas descriptive grammar plays the role of passive observer, prescriptive grammar seeks the role of overseer. It is dictatorial, demanding stern obedience to its strictures. It embraces the sacred city model of utopia, demanding obedience to its rules under threat of expulsion from the garden. In his noted essay “Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar” (Hartwell 2003), Patrick Hartwell describes variations of prescriptive grammar as Grammar 2 and Grammar 3. Grammar 2 is the analysis and codification of grammatical conventions. Grammar 3, on the other hand, deals with the social conventions that people use to identify so-called “bad” grammar. These models strive to form rigidity in language through a variety of formal and informal methodologies. Formal techniques include grammar texts, worksheets, and teacher instruction. Informal techniques include mockery of regional accents/ grammar, promotion of people who have mastered the “correct” grammar at the expense of more qualified people who speak a different grammar, and portrayal in media of other-grammared speakers as either ignorant or stupid. However, as Peter Trudgill notes, language is in a constant state of evolution, and that “[a]ll languages change all the time. It is not very well understood why this is the case, but it is a universal characteristic of human languages. The only languages which do not change are those, like Latin, which nobody speaks” (Trudgill 1998, 1). Attempting to create fixity in language is like trying to dip a living body in clear resin for examination purposes. While it creates an easily examined object, it also destroys the living soul of the object of examination. By their nature, things that are living are in a state of constant change; only the dead lack entropy. For purposes of cybernetic grammar, attempting to induce rigor into a culture is at the center of conservative thought. Cybernetic interfaction must follow established patterns, often based on prescriptions hundreds if not thousands of years old as well as antiquated technologies and their abilities

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to successfully interfact. Attempting to apply these regulations to modern technologies in cultures shaped by advanced technologies is equivalent to attempting to apply an instruction manual designed for an abacus to using the latest iPhone; there may be some vague overlap, but all practical application is lost, rendering it not only useless, but actively confusing and detrimental to functional usage. Just as linguistic grammar must evolve to keep pace with usage, so to must cybernetic grammar recognize the impact that technological transformation has on the ability for combinations of cymemes to successfully create meaning. Such attempts to calcify language disproportionately impact creative writers. Lesley Milroy notes that these attempts at binding and codifying language are relatively recent, and prior to these efforts, there was a greater variety of language usage and structures. He comments that the “correct” versions were prescribed as such relatively recently in the history of the language, as part of the flurry of scholarly activity associated with the codification of the English language in the eighteenth century. Since the goal of codification is to define a particular form as standard, this process entailed intolerance of the range of choices which speakers and writers had hitherto taken for granted. In earlier centuries all these “errors” appeared in highly sophisticated writing. (Milroy 1998, 95)

The impact of codification is a reduction of acceptable signifying structures, forcing creative writers to eliminate options of expression they previously utilized effectively. Milroy notes that prescriptive grammar focuses on literary etiquette, setting out a recipe of correct and incorrect usage, whereas descriptive grammar focuses on language as utilized by native speakers since they were children (Milroy 1998, 96). Transformation of grammatical patterns takes time to gain acceptance, often generational. For cybernetic grammar, marriage between same-sex couples as a lived experience is nothing new; there have been aunts and uncles living with their long-term “roommate” that disapproving parents have tried to explain to their children for centuries in the United States. Descriptive grammar would call this what it is: marriage. Prescriptive grammar, however, has attempted to deny this formation validity despite its proven functionality and creation of meaning equivalent to any heterosexual bond. This lack of formal recognition of same-sex marriage as the creation of valid meaning reflects the constant struggle between oppressor and oppressed, a common battle that takes place within grammar. Grammar contains the values of the powerful, enforcing and inscribing those values on the oppressed. Whereas linguistic grammar manipulates thoughts, enabling certain concepts while denying others, cyborg grammar controls bodies,

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permitting certain combinations and interfactions while forbidding those that work against the interests of the controlling powers. Rebecca Brittenham and Hildegard Hoeller comment that “although these conventions are primarily used to foster shared communication of ideas, they can sometimes be used as the ideological tools of that culture, determining success and status, controlling who belongs and who does not. Grammar is in this sense both a larger cultural ‘rulebook of meaning’ and a set of rules that police that culture” (Brittenham and Hoeller 2004, 92). Prescriptive grammar is the rulebook of the elite, controlling thought through linguistic grammar and actions through cybernetic grammar. If Weaver’s first sense of grammar may be called descriptive, and her second sense is prescriptive, her third sense may best be described as stylistic, described by Hartwell as “grammatical terms used in the interest of teaching prose style” (Hartwell 2003, 225). While some observation of grammatical rules is observed in this context, they are secondary considerations to rhetoric of meaning. Regulations and hierarchy are suborned to efficacy, singularity, and artistry. While this type of grammar has a nodding relationship with grammar 2 and grammar 3, it is not ruled by them. Just as with understanding how individual cyborgs are created through cymemes can enable different decision trees when selecting their components, so too can analyzing cyborg grammar permit alternative choices when forming cyntagmas based on their ability to uphold the ideals cultures claim to support, such as equality, freedom, and liberty. Such analysis will also reveal the hypocrisy often evinced in the formation of meaningful cytagmas when denying the cyborgs formed with certain ganmemes the ability to meaningfully sequence with other cyborgs despite their functional ability to do so. Judith Butler’s discussion of gender performativity in her seminal text Gender Trouble provides an excellent example of the cybernetic grammar and its contrast to cybernetic spelling. Her exploration of drag highlights the disconnect between biological sex and manufactured gender through performativity: Acts, gestures and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface of the body, through the play of signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal, the organizing principle of identity as a cause. Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means. That the gendered body is performative suggests that it has no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality. This also suggests that if reality is fabricated as an interior essence, that the very interiority is an effect and function of a decidedly public and social discourse, the

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public regulation of fantasy through the surface politics of the body, the gender border control that differentiates inner from outer, and so institutes the integrity of the subject. (Butler 1990, 173)

Butler’s point that the public discourse includes acts, gestures, and enactment is a valid one; however, these are always intrinsically linked to the technologies that allow them to be executed. Technologies permit the actualization of the desired acts within the public sphere; without them, the tools necessary to create meaning would be absent. Attempting to do so would be like trying to convey words with language without sounds or letters (or at least, only a single vowel). Since the rules of public discourse have declared that numerous cyborgs are either masculine or feminine, cybernetic grammar dictates the ways in which these cyborgs may interfact; even if a particular cyborg is not regarded as masculine or feminine themselves, how a gendered cyborgs interfacts with nongendered cyborgs is frequently controlled by cybernetic grammar. However, as Butler notes, gender is performative, and as such, the cyborgs formed by the interfactions are a result of performative selections. These selections are made within the context of the cy-syst within which the body operates, with the arbitrary rules of cyborg grammar dictating the interpretive act. Understanding the intricacies of cybernetic grammar as an arbitrary function not only permits the formation of cyborgs and subsequent cyntagmas that convey standard meanings, but also ones that deliberately and intentionally break these rules while still creating meaning of the supposed “concrete” rules. Just as one can creatively bend (or even break) the rules of grammar and still produce syntagmas that create meaning, as is done in genres such poetry, cyntagmas may also violate standard cybernetic grammar rules, subverting them to create meanings outside of those traditionally permitted by those structures. The gendered nature of certain cyborgs is comparable to the gendered nature of certain languages such as Spanish that gender nouns. In Spanish, nouns that are considered feminine typically end in -a or -d, such as guitarra (guitar), whereas those regarded as masculine end in -o or -e, such as teatro (theater); there are a few other endings considered masculine or feminine as well. However, this designation is arbitrary and unrelated to the nature of the object itself. Men can easily interfact with a guitar, while women may act or watch performances in the theater. These designations could have been easily inverted. Not only is there nothing inherently masculine about the signified, but the signifier is equally nongendered. The -a has no inherent feminine qualities, while there is nothing masculine about the -o other than the designation assigned by the cy-syst. One could just as easily state that guitarra is

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masculine and teatro is feminine, and without knowledge of the formative linguistic system, there is nothing intrinsic within the letters to indicate masculinity or femininity. This arbitrary designation based on letters composing the word (spelling) in turn dictates the types of words with which it may function in syntagmas, as well as the manner in which they do so. Masculine nouns are preceded by the article el if the noun is singular or los if the noun is plural. As a result, the arbitrary spelling that forms the words as masculine or feminine in turn dictate which words are allowed to be next to each other in a sentence because of the equally arbitrary rules of grammar. Prescriptive grammar (Hartwell’s grammar 2 and 3) in this case can only function because of the nonessential gendering of the nouns, which in turn dictates which articles must precede them; as such, spelling and its implications dictates grammar. Drag is a unique combination of cybernetic spelling and grammar forged in the same types of relationships shown in gendered languages. These types of linguistic formations serve as a reasonable analytical template for analyzing gender in cybernetic spelling/grammar. Just as language purists resist attempts to degender unnecessarily gendered terms or object to the singular “they,” so to do cultural traditionalists rage against drag, even many “enlightened” feminists who object to drag’s supposed objectionable mimesis: The notion of an original or primary gender identity is often parodied within the cultural practices of drag, cross-dressing, and the sexual stylization of butch/femme identities. Within feminist theory, such parodic identities have often been understood to be either degrading to women, in the case of drag and cross-dressing, or an uncritical appropriation of sex-role stereotyping from within the practice of heterosexuality, especially in the case of butch/femme lesbian identities. But the relation between the “imitation” and the “original” is, I think, more complicated than that critique general allows. . . . The performance of drag plays upon the distinction between the anatomy of the performer and the gender that is being performed. (Butler 1990, 174–75)

Butler continues to differentiate between the physical embodiment of the performer’s anatomy, the performer’s gender, and the gender displayed within the performance. She notes that by discriminating between these areas, drag explicitly points out the constructed nature of gender, arguing, “As much as drag creates a unified picture of ‘woman,’ . . . it also reveals the distinctness of those aspects of gendered experience which are falsely naturalized as a unity through the regulatory fiction of heterosexual coherence. In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself, as well as its contingency” (Butler 1990, 175).

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Drag examines the cybernetic spelling of woman, finely parsing cymeme by cymeme how the cyborg is formed of individual components. Performers perfect their interfactions with the technemes used to form female performer to the point that the resultant cyborg is exaggerated in its expression, surpassing the expressive distinctiveness in many cases of standard cygnification. As mentioned previously, if technemes are considered as consonants while ganmemes are regarded as vowels, the shift of a single ganmeme in the cyborg would be the equivalent of shifting the final vowel in teatro to teatra. While the individual vowel has changed, the sign is still clearly recognizable and the signification is easily identifiable. The vowel switch will force a closer examination, a reconsideration, of the sign itself and the necessity of the vowel as a gender marker in the formation of the sign; when the meaning is clear with the “opposing” vowel, what useful function does the marker serve in the creation of meaning? The biologically masculine body of the drag performer (acknowledging that there are female drag performers who perform as both males and as females) stands in apparent contradiction to the cyborg being created, be it Cher, Tina Turner, or an original character. Performers interfact with technemes, such as lipstick, pantyhose, fake eyelashes, jewelry, and so on, with an ease and skill that surpasses that of most biological females. Like with spoken language, their “accent” is not only impeccable, but embellished. If we consider English accents, for example, this move would be roughly equivalent to someone from Yorkshire mastering Received Pronunciation and intentionally overemphasizing the identifying characteristics of the accent. Hair, makeup, wardrobe, and the like, display a not only a mastery of clear cultural understanding of the variety of technemes that form “femininity” and their interfactions, but also the ability to utilize them to create cyborgs and cyntagmas. These cyborgs, despite their obvious cygnification, raise questions about the grammar associated with them. If teatro becomes teatra, should a speaker still use the traditional el in conjunction with it, or would the feminine le be the proper selection? Or instead, perhaps a new article needs to be created that does not identify gender to eliminate the need for gender identification in the sign. In a like manner, the cybernetic grammar surrounding drag performers creates uncertainty in other cyborgs as to the proper grammar when creating cyntagmas when interfacting with them, especially when humor is factored in, a frequent component of drag shows. A drag performer operates in a liminal space of identity and cygnification, permitting a playful game of peek-a-boo on either side of the lintel with the cygnification of the character versus that that the performer is supposed to display according to cultural norms. This muddling of traditional cygnification opens room to explore the arbitrary rules of cybernetic grammar, demonstrated by the performer playing with the

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audience’s understanding of the principles of how cyborgs interact and pointing out the foolish nature of those rules. This mocking tone is most pointed at prescriptive grammar, Hartwell’s grammar 2 and grammar 3, especially the latter. Drag’s deep and sophisticated knowledge of cybernetic grammar 3 is constantly demonstrated through its exaggerated appeal to standard masculine/feminine intefactions such as flirting and gender-based humor. These interfactions are humorous because of the audience’s understanding of “typical” cybernetic grammar in the prescriptive sense and the manner in which the drag performer carefully follows almost all of those rules while carefully breaking some select ones. The detailed and carefully created syntagmas spoken by the performer as well as their mastery of the cyntagma allows the formation of both the humor and the resultant appreciation of the craftsmanship from the audience. Drag is often rejected by conservative elements of western societies as an aberration, a demonstration of poor cybernetic spelling and recklessly breaking grammatical rules. However, outside of the most prescriptive sense of grammar, there are multiple arguments to be made for embracing drag and other similarly irreverent cyntagmatic formations. The first may be found in Hartwell’s grammar 1, the natural recognition by native speakers of the patterns and structures of the language they grew up with. Grammar 1, rather than attempting to determine what the patterns should be within that language, simply observes what those patterns are. As drag is well-recognized technique in creating cyborgs and subsequent cyntagmas, complete with rules and structures that are defined to the point that Ru Paul’s Drag Race is one of the more popular shows on television over the last decade, acknowledging that it exists and has its own regulations (whether or not one “agrees” with them) should not be a point of contention. If the Spanish neologism teatra gained common acceptance despite its apparent bending of the arbitrary gender rules associated with it, denying its existence and the grammar rules that arise to accompany it would be ridiculous; it exists, and it has consistent rules by which it is judged and understood. Drag is often accused of being “bad grammar” by both conservatives who see it as a perversion of the masculine role and even by some progressive women who interpret it as a mockery of feminine characteristics. However, Milroy notes that these arguments are unsupported in reference to linguistic grammar, and his points translate to cyborg grammar. He observes that people from a wide variety of backgrounds utilize terms and constructions that would be considered incorrect according to the formal structures of prescriptive grammar. Frequently, those who violate prescriptive grammar are members of the educated and wealthy classes who understand and can navigate the complex labyrinth of prescriptive grammar; however, they frequently do not follow the dictates of prescriptive grammar, breaking the very rules they

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decry in others, especially those of oppressed or minority groups, for doing so. The grammars they deride have inherent structure that is easily recognizable and creates a coherent system for conveying meaning, while the often convoluted and contrary restrictions of formalized grammar can interfere with doing so (Milroy 1998, 101). In the same sense, drag performers (or, in a related but very different category, trans folks) are often sneered at by the more conservative wing of Western society. In some cases, it is treated as a mental defect, gender dysphoria, an inability to understand how to form proper cygnification in the same way that a learning disability might interfere with forming signs properly. In other cases, they regard it as a moral defect, an equivalent to intentionally speaking incorrectly or pejoratively mock prescribed language. Despite the apparent aversion to drag and cross-dressing among these elements, many public detractors have been found to engage in the practice in private. Like those who have proper elocution in public but revert to their native dialect in casual, comfortable settings, they desperately want to cygnify in the manner most comfortable to them; fear of public critique pressures them into obscuring their tendencies in hidden shame, cygnifying either in privacy, as one would in a journal, or to a limited audience as in a private poetry reading. They practice cybernetic grammar 1 naturally, or at least desire to do so. As demonstrated, there is a strong argument for the acknowledgement and acceptance of drag within cy-systs because of grammar 1. As valid as this argument is, an even stronger one may be made using Hartwell’s grammar 5, a bifurcated stylistic approach. While the first sense is a broad rhetorical approach, the second addresses the manner in which language may be consciously manipulated with purpose of highlighting its constructed nature: [Grammar5 is] broadly metalinguistic rather than linguistic, involves active manipulation of language with conscious attention to surface form. This second level may be developed tacitly, as a natural adjunct to developing rhetorical competencies. . . . It may be developed formally, by manipulating language for stylistic effect, and such manipulation may involve . . . a vocabulary of style. But it is primarily developed by any kind of language activity that enhances the awareness of language as language. . . . Such a model places language, at all levels . . . as literal stuff, verbal clay, to be molded and probed, shaped and reshaped, and, above all, enjoyed. (Hartwell 2003, 225–26)

Drag assumes this playful role, asking questions about the construction of cybernetic grammar using highly stylized cyborgs. The performer is like a poet who intentionally uses the word teatra and then tasks their readers to determine if the attached article will be la or el, perhaps merely placing the letter “l” in place and challenging the audience to make a decision as to what

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is intended. Drag embraces this play, testing the audience to determine what exactly is intended. The surface nature of culturally constructed femininity is on full display, forcing the audience to acknowledge the lack of anything inherent with almost all culturally gendered technemes in forming cyborgs, as well as challenging the cyborgs’ ability to interfact with each other grammatically. Just as language can be shaped to the rhetorical needs of the speaker to convey their message to their intended audience, cygnification is malleable. It can be adjusted to meet the speaker’s needs, using nontraditional spellings and cyborgs when forming cyntagmas. Since Butler’s definition of gender is unrelated to anatomical configuration, grammar 5 as practiced by drag highlights that fabricated requirement. In some forms of cygnification, the sense of play is either unnecessary or virtually nonexistent; drag, on the other hand, revels in the randomness, embracing the full sense of structural revelation, like examining at the metal girders of a glass building. Susan Sontag comments in “Notes on Camp” how camp focuses on style, dismissing the prescriptive nature of cybernetic grammar. She quips, “Style is everything. . . . [W]hat counts, finally, is the style in which ideas are held. . . . The whole point of camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to ‘the serious.’ One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious” (Sontag 1982, 115–16). The ideal for a successful drag performance is an audience who has an intimate understanding of both the rules of drag and of standard gendered cygnification, one that can understand the cleverness of the manipulation of the cyborg play taking place within the cyntagmas being formed. Like puns, which require the audience to know the meanings of both the individual words as well as the surrounding grammatical structures to appreciate the manipulation, so too does drag require an audience that understands traditional masculinity and femininity, allowing them to laugh at the cleverness of the manipulation, both of the cyborg itself as well as their interfactions with the surrounding cyborgs in forming cyntagmas. Using the term “play” in this context naturally leads to a conversation of Derrida and his sense of language. So far, this text has focused on the structure of cygnification in terms of Saussure; however, if cyborg semiotics is to be viable as a discipline, it must show that it may be equitably applicable to the theoretical offspring of structuralism. Derrida’s theories, integral to the rise of post-structural thought, operate equally well in cyborg semiotics, as will be demonstrated in chapter 6.

Chapter 6

The Deconstruction of Cyborg Semiotics

At the core of Saussurian thought is the concept of structure; that is, language, though it may change and evolve over time, is a relatively stable entity with comprehensible and definable scaffolding. This structure permits conveyance of thought with relative ease, as well as a matrix allowing analysis of the transmission of meaning. Derrida disrupts this notion, arguing that meaning is, in fact, an unstable entity; meaning is evasive, slipping away like water through a sieve. As soon as one thinks that meaning is held in their grasps, it dances off, a coy nymph teasing a frustrated satyr. This inability for the sign to fully contain signification is critical for cyborg semiotics. In the introduction to Of Grammatology, Gyatari Spivak observes how Freudian concepts heavily influenced Derrida, especially the notion that in dreams, “words” may function as “things” (Spivak 1974, xlv). Cyborg semiotics inverts Derrida’s Freudian paradigm, treating “things” as “words” instead, or more accurately, treating “things with bodies” as words. This inversion is important to understanding the nature and function of cyborg semiotics, but in order for this relationship to be fully understood, the relationship between technology and humanity must be redefined. Though cyborg semiotics had not yet been created, Derrida challenged the broader field of cybernetics to accurately define how it would supplant other areas of metaphysical knowledge, and set the parameters for doing so successfully, stating that whether it has essential limits or not, the entire field covered by the cybernetic program will be the field of writing. If the theory of cybernetics is by itself to oust all metaphysical concepts—including the concepts of soul, of life, of value, of choice, of memory—which until recently served to separate the machine from man, it must conserve the notion of writing, trace, grammé, or the grapheme, until its own historico-metaphysical character is also exposed. Even before being determined as human (with all the distinctive characteristics that have always been attributed to man and the entire system of significations that they 139

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imply) or non-human, the grammè — or the grapheme—would thus name the element. (Derrida 1976, 9)

The project of cyborg semiotics is to fulfill Derrida’s challenge. It defines construct, cygnified, and cyborg, successfully naming its objects, its structures, and preserving both the grapheme and Derrida’s concept of trace (which will be explored later in this chapter). It also demonstrates the inseparable nature of the construct and cygnified within the cyborg, denying the clamor of so-called technological purists who claim that technology simply exists without meaning. While they are correct in that technology in itself lacks meaning, their argument is shallow, failing to recognize once humans interfact with technemes, the meaning comes to life, organic flesh providing a conceptual pulse in conjunction with inert technology. Because of the physical separation between technologies and bodies, technology is often considered ancillary to organisms. Derrida’s concept of the supplement addresses the dismissal of the technological as secondary to the organic. He defines the supplement in terms of the exterior and the additional as opposed to the internal and the necessary; it is superfluous to the core element. As Derrida discusses, Jean-Jaques Rosseau presents this opposition through the dichotomy of speech and writing, with speech as the original and essential, while writing is a supplement, a fuzzy copy lacking innovation or novelty. Derrida denies this simplistic division, arguing instead for not only the necessity, but the priority, of the supplement: [T]he concept of the supplement—which here determines that of the representative image—harbors within itself two significations whose cohabitation is as strange as it is necessary. The supplement adds itself, it is a surplus, a plentitude enriching another plentitude, the fullest measure of presence. It cumulates and accumulates presence. . . . But the supplement supplements. It adds only to replace. . . . The sign is always the supplement of the thing itself. This second signification of the supplement cannot be separated from the first. . . . But their common function is shown in this: whether it adds or substitutes itself, the supplement is exterior, outside of the positivity to which it is super-added, alien to that which, in order to be replaced by it, must be other than it. (Derrida 1976, 144–45)

While Derrida is referring to the contrast between writing and speaking in this instance, other examples demonstrate his point, including Rosseau’s exemplar of masturbation. For Rosseau, masturbation served as a supplementary means of sexual gratification in lieu of fulfillment with his desired partner. The necessity of the supplementary act of masturbation seems to indicate a deficiency with the act itself, perhaps because of an inability to access his paramour (not interested, married, etc.) or that the act itself is not fulfilling

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due to physical, emotional, or psychological restrictions. Despite this seeming lack in the coital act requiring the masturbatory supplementation, Derrida argues that the supplement is not merely an add-on to an original, but both an enhancement and replacement (Derrida 1976, 145). In the process of both enhancing and replacing the original, it the supplement ends up supplanting that which it was supposed to add-on to. I will use the neologism supplemant to refer to those things that simultaneously enhance and supplant originals, as recognizing both parts of these dual processes is important to cyborg semiotics. When speaking of the cyborg, the technological components are often considered to be the supplemant to the organic components. Humans prize the confines of their flesh, worshipping its uniqueness and self-sufficiency. As Jennifer Parker-Starbuck comments, “[I]t is also the cyborg’s very nonhumanness that creates a paradox—the cyborg is never ‘whole.’ Even as the masculinized war-machine, a physical body invaded by technology has changed integrity and is no longer fully human” (Parker-Starbuck 2014, 3). However, the evolution of the body’s capabilities has come not from within, but rather through its interfactions with its technologies. Humans have supplemanted their natural body with space shuttles that allow them to breathe in the void, nuclear weapons that can slay adversaries by the hundreds of thousands with the push of a button, and race cars that can travel hundreds of miles per hour. As technology integrates with the body, becoming one with it in an identity that requires it to have a true “I” that is inseparable from the body, the question of what precisely the supplemant is must be raised. Like a properly brewed cup of coffee, once the ground beans have leached into the water, attempting to say that the water is a different thing from the beans is not only incorrect, as they have bonded on a chemical level, but an incorrect assessment of the current state of the brew; it is a suspension as opposed to two separate entities. And like many suspensions, the product of the two is superior to the sum of its parts. Cyborgs’ abilities also both qualitatively and quantitatively outperform their organic technological counterparts’ combined independent efforts, facilitating movement, life support, analysis, and countless other functionalities. The body is almost never just “the body”; it is almost always the cyborg. Runner is not just the runner’s body, but her shoes, socks, shorts, and hydration products among numerous other technologies that form her. The body is not only unable to meet the requirements of cygnifying runner without these additional technologies, but the technologies lack the ability to cygnify without the body. The body is thus supplemanted by the cyborg, both adding to it and replacing it from both the perspective of action and cygnification. As Paola Marrati notes, differentiating between the organic and machinic can be difficult, as well as not necessarily useful:

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In Bergson’s account nothing essential differentiates organs and machines; what distinguishes them is just the “stuff of which they are made.” Organs are “organic tools,” while machines are “inorganic tools”; that is to say, they are different chemical formations, but they serve analogous purposes and have analogous functions. As a result, and again using Derridian terminology, not only does technology supplement biology, for Bergson, but biology in its turn supplements technology. Or, to say it otherwise, there is no clear-cut line that divides organisms and machines, “artificial” devices and “natural” organic functions: only different cognitive strategies and material purpose of coping with and modifying the environment. (Marrati 2010, 11–12)

As the machinic supplemants the biological, so too does the biological supplemant the machinic. The attempt to separate them once this supplemantation begins is not only an exercise in futility, but also erroneous for purposes of cygnification. Each is a cymeme that serves no cygnifying purpose outside of the formation of cyborgs, and since both technological and biological cymemes are necessary to the formation of virtually every cyborg, the distinction between to the two is one of function within the cyborg, not prioritization. Both types of cymeme fade through their interfactions and are supplemanted by the cyborg. The first being to bear the sign (though according to the definitions as labeled in this text, certainly not the first to be a cyborg) of cyborg was a mouse that received physical modifications to increase survivability in the vacuum of outer space. Robert Driscoll, a member of the team that assembled this rodentian cyborg, wrote the final report for the project. In it, he attempts to explain the significance of the project. He argues, The cyborg study is the study of man. It concerns itself with the determination of man’s capabilities and limitations under the unpredictable and often hostile conditions of space flight, and the theoretical possibility of incorporating artificial organs, drugs, and/or hypothermia as integral parts of the life support systems in space craft design of the future, and of reducing metabolic demands and the attendant life support requirements. By this approach it is hoped that the efficiency and longevity of the life process on board space flights may be increased. (Driscoll 1995, 76)

Driscoll further states that the project’s goal is to find ways to extend human capabilities through integration of technology (81). If the study of the cyborg is really the study of humanity, then humanity has been supplemanted by the cyborg. While this has always been the case, the creation of the sign cyborg finally permitted a vehicle for conversing about what was already a practiced, though unacknowledged, condition of “human” existence. While

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this supplemantation had existed for thousands of years, the lack of a proper signifier to discuss it prevented adequate discourse about this condition, an error this project seeks to rectify by providing additional terminology and conceptual scaffolding to further prior conversations. Driscoll’s report is significant in defining the terms of the cyborg project, especially its forward-thinking approach to human/technological integration. However, it is not without its critics, such as L. E. Fanzen, who viewed it as overly simplistic and reductive in claiming that a stable human condition exists: While acknowledging the human’s localized functionality, the report poses any limitation as a conspicuous deficiency, a lack: “The need for this work arises because man is basically a biological organism designed to operate within the parameters defined by the earth environment. Despite [sic] remarkable degree of over design, there are many areas in which man’s capabilities fall short of requirements posed by such missions” (p. 80). In this paradox, “mission” requirements exceed the boundaries of the human, who must functionally be replaced by cyborg efficiency. Notably, the report never fully acknowledges the drastic implications coded within the term “cyborg,” and only reiterates the myth of a stable human identity.

Fazen’s rebuttal misses on a couple key points. The first is his insistence on arguing for a clear difference between “limitation” and “lack.” If a limitation exists, a lack of ability to fulfill the desired objective arises. Without technological intervention, a lack exists; quite frankly, a lack of even achieving the most basic functions of what is regarded as human existence, such as eating or excreting in the manner considered “human” is not possible, as utensils would be absent, or bidets, toilets, toilet paper, or even a bucket would be absent. Not only would functioning in the manner considered “human” be impossible, but so would cygnifying as human. Humans who eat all their food with their hands or excrete without proper hygiene are considered animalistic; they do not cygnify in the manner considered appropriate for the full cygnification even of “human.” Fazen’s second error is his assumption that Driscoll is somehow arguing for a stable human identity. To the contrary, Driscoll contends that human capabilities are in a state of evolution through technological integration. This is the opposite of stability; it is metamorphic. In fact, the very instability of human identity as it transforms through technological integration is perhaps the most stable feature of human identity. Technological evolution is one of the most consistent features of the human experience. As the body is supplemanted by the cyborg, so too is the minimal cygnification of the body supplemanted. The body creates technology, interfacts

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with its creation, and is replaced by the product of its own invention. The body actively and constantly seeks its own substitute, and then seeks out a better substitute to replace the first. Eventually, the individual body is lost, hidden behind countless layers of technological obfuscation, to the point that it cannot be readily identified without its formative technological layers. Attempting to cygnify with just a body would leave a minimum of cygnification; such a move would be the equivalent of ripping a single page out of a dictionary and claiming that solitary leaf is an entire language. Not only does the body disappear within its technological guise, but the minimal cygnification the body does offer is also reshaped by the technology it manufactures. The body has evolved to allow smoother interfactions with technemes, reshaping itself to more readily form the desired cyborg. Taylor states that “[n]ot only did we make these necessary objects, but, within a framework of some two or three million years, the objects have physically and mentally shaped use. Without them or their incursion into our lives, our heads would be a different size, our body type would be different, we wouldn’t be living in houses. There would be no houses” (Taylor 2014, 7). As the body is reshaped to allow easier interfactions, the cygnification is altered. Like a silent “e” changes the vowel sound of other morphemes within a word, thus changing the pronunciation of the signifier while maintaining the signification, so too does the technology alter the body, altering the way in which it is “pronounced,” but the cygnification of the cyborg remains the same. Even signification is increasingly recognizing the reciprocal formative relationship between bodies and technologies. In Finland, common slang has labeled cell phones as kanny, defined as an extension of the hand. Clark defines this as not an addendum, but rather something that is a part of the user, just as vocal cords are, and assumed to be always available for the user (Clark 2003, 9). As the cygnification for cyborg existence evolves, language has been forced to evolve to reflect the understanding of this relationship. The hand is supplemanted by the kanny; the hand is not complete without the phone, as it is missing its natural extension. Marshall McLuhan make a comparable observation in the seminal text The Medium Is the Message, noting that the wheels of a vehicle are nothing more than extensions of the foot and clothes are extensions of the skin (McLuhan 2001, 31–39); as with the hand, the foot is both added to and then replaced by the wheel, creating a cygnifier that differs from that obtainable by the body alone. Cyborg supplemantation also plays a formative structure in the creation and transformation of traditional gender identities. One of the most common supplemantary technological innovations is the dildo. The dildo can serve a variety of purposes, as it can be used to penetrate by those who lack a penis, have limited function of their own penis, desire self-penetration without needing a human partner, desire an inversion of the traditional male/female

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penetrative dichotomy, or seek to add double penetrative capabilities to an existing penis without bringing in a third sexual partner. The supplemantary capabilities of the dildo allow cygnification unavailable without it. However, the dildo has not been without its detractors. Biddy Martin discusses LGBTQIA+ activist Susie Bright’s inner conflict and evolving views regarding the dildo within lesbian relationships in “Sexual Practice and Changing Lesbian Identities.” For years in her early career, Bright emphasized the distinction between dildos and penises while allowing for the enjoyment brought about by penetration of the dildo as a valid desire. She now supports the legitimacy of phallic expression through the dildo, including the butch practice of “packing dildos” (Martin 1992, 105). Butler recalls how one femme lesbian liked her boys to be girls (Butler 1990, 123). Her desired cygnification requires a combination of ganmemes and technemes that would be unattainable within her cy-syst without the supplemantation created by the intervention of the dildo forming the butch cyborg. Were the dildo not available, like a missing letter, a different construction of cymemes would be used to create the cyborg with the desired cygnification; however, the dildo is designed to interfact smoothly with the body for convenient formation of the cyborg, one which supplemants the cyborg traditionally associated with the body’s biological organs. The choice of the dildo is an active choice, much like learning specific jargon within one’s own language not traditionally practiced by a group to whom one belongs. Forming these cyborgs requires actively seeking them out and practicing them, often without a mentor, like slaves in the antebellum south surreptitiously acquiring books to try to learn how to write and create signs. There is a conscious choice to seek this cygnification as opposed to simply acquiring the cygnification one was raised with. The formed cyborg is thus subversive, as it is created outside of the cy-syst’s conventions. While not all cyborgs are subversive (few are, as most cybernetic supplemantation is normative for ease of cygnification), supplemantation provides the opportunity for dissident meanings; understanding how this process works may open new opportunities for subversion of traditional cygnification. Cybernetic supplemantation provides people access to cybernetic discourse that would ordinarily be denied to them without supplemanation. Discourse communities that would otherwise be denied to individuals are suddenly available, or at least have the possibility of availability. As more diverse bodies are admitted to a discourse community, the nature and structure of the community can shift, hopefully in more progressive directions. The ability to alter discourse as desired through supplemantation is a function of Derridian play. Play acknowledges that a structure exists, and within that structure there is a center; however, the very notion of a center within the structure acknowledges that there are locations within the structure that are

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not the center where meaning can still be made. Structure does limit where meaning can be made, as too far of a departure from the center (that point where no substitutions can be made) eliminates the possibility of meaning. However, play means that the center is not the only place in which meaning can be made; other points within the structure can also create meaning, and once meaning has been made frequently and successfully enough outside of the center, the center itself moves. A key part of the project of cyborg semiotics is the movement of the center. The human body has always been regarded as the center, that which is irreducible for meaning in identity. It is the core of meaning. Cyborg semiotics proposes that the body itself is not the center, but rather the cyborg should be the center of identity. The cyborg has always been within the structure of identity, but the center was always assumed to be the body, independent of technology. Cyborg semiotics insists upon the inclusion of technological supplemants as part of identity, for without it, cyborgs as we now understand them would be impossible. This play within the structure of identity allows the shift of the center from the human to the cyborg, acknowledging the de facto reality that the fully organic human has always been supplemanted. The challenge faced in creating this shift is the distrust of technological supplemantation in many cultures, especially if it is perceived to come at the diminishment of the individual body or the broader culture within which it arises. When such supplemantation occurs within the play of the cyborg, it is often treated as sacrilegious or blasphemous in order to restrict the play as quickly and firmly as possible and return meaning to the center; the cy-syst fights to maintain its center within the structure, fearful of the structure collapsing if the center shifts too much. In order to maintain the centrality of the body within the structure, aspersions are cast at technological interfactions that alter the center’s location. Biblically, one of the main stories to reflect such resistance is the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. In this story, humans attempt to raise a tower to the heavens. Such arrogance in attempting to raise the human body beyond its “natural” cygnifying center through the addition of the technology of a tower is framed as an afront to God, since if they achieve this, then humans will supposedly be able to accomplish anything they desire; only He is permitted to cygnify in such a manner. As such, He removed their ability to signify to each other, preventing further attempts at cygnifying together in a manner that could coexist with Him. This story warns against the creation of a complex cyborg that shifts the social cygnification of the cyborg away from its center. The lesson: know your place. Greek mythology weaves a story with a similar warning. To escape from the clutches of King Minos on the island of Crete, Daedalus created wings of wood, wax, and feathers to permit himself and his son to flee. He warns his son not to fly too low, as the wings will get wet, nor should he soar too

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high, as doing so will melt the wax; either would be disastrous, leading to the boy plummeting to his death. Icarus ignored his father’s pleas, ascending to heights beyond those that his wings were designed to accommodate; the wings melted, and the boy perished after plummeting into the ocean. In this fable, Icarus creates a cyborg that separates him too far from standard human cygnification; he deviates so dramatically from the center that he must be destroyed. Just like cultural cygnification that moves the center must be disrupted so that normalcy may be maintained, so too must individual cygnification that deviates significantly from the center be destroyed to preserve the center’s stability. Both stories are warnings to know one’s place. These challenges to bodily primacy as the center of the “I” of cygnification have found fulfillment in the myths of today, as cyborgs have become the terror that haunts people’s waking nightmares. There are few that have struck a cultural chord of fear as much as the Terminator, James Cameron’s creation portrayed in its original form by the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. John Clute states, that “what terrifies about this cyborg is that it is human, but also more than human” (Clute 1995, 55). Haraway concurs, arguing that “the Terminator is the sign of the beast on the face of post-modern culture, the sign of the sacred image of the Same” (Haraway 1995, xv). The Terminator warns of the dangers of supplemantation, the consequences of the body’s replacement by the technorganism. If the center moves too far, then the body will disappear, destroyed by its supplamanter. As such, embodied purists insist that such supplemantation must be resisted, destroyed at its source before “real” humans are eliminated. While the Tower of Babel warns against consequences of the shifting the center for an entire culture and Icarus for the individual, the Terminator reflects the potential consequences for an entire culture should even small percentage of the population deviate from the center. In their view, if even a few individuals or multicomponent entities move the center too far from the body, the entire cy-syst can collapse. Such purists fight desperately to prevent cyborg cygnification from shifting too far from the template of the original body. The dildo interfacting specifically with a female body for use on a partner is therefore one of the most fundamentally objectionable cyborgs that can be formed for these embodied fundamentalists. This cyborg moves the center of sexuality away from the naked body (specifically, the naked male form), that which cygnifies without supplemantation. They consider this corpus as the centrality of human identity. In this matrix of meaning, a female body wielding her dildo not only removes the center of meaning from the independent body (specifically the patriarchal male body), but in doing so creates a cyborg that has the potential to undermine the structure of the cy-syst. Body originalists view such shifts within the cy-syst as potentially cataclysmic, as the center’s movement will damage individuals as in Icarus (perversion, abuse),

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and ultimately shift society itself in a deviation from the body as intended by God as in Babel (undermining the sanctity of marriage, “save our children”). They therefore initiate a preemptive war against cyborg cygnification as in the Terminator series (the so-called “gay agenda,” denial of equal rights), attempting to prevent the formation of the cyborg before their cy-syst’s center shifts to the point of what they perceive as structural collapse. The emphasis on body centrality calls for a clear distinction between not only the dildo and the penis, but also between the penis and the clitoris. Biologically, the penis and clitoris begin as the same piece of flesh in utero, differing only when either the X chromosome extends the flesh outward into a penis or the Y leaves it in place, forming the clitoris. Distinctions between these two can be tricky, as the penis may come in a variety of shape, sizes, colors, with many missing foreskins due to the traditional practice of male genital mutilation called circumcision affiliated with the Judeo-Christian religions. For a variety of reasons, the process of transformation from clitoris to penis may be interrupted, leaving something between a clitoris and a penis; in fact, a body may possess both a vagina and a full penis. If cygnification is reliant completely upon the body (which, as mentioned earlier, is actually impossible), then such dual presentation of sexual organs does not permit clear meaning to be made as it would be reliant upon a fraction of the available cymemes (only the ganmemes), and no clear prioritization can be made between the two if both are equal. The penis may be micro, not fully developed, paired with a vagina, or even be completely absent, and yet if one has clearly cygnified as male, the cyborg itself is rarely called into question. As there can be no clear biological definition of the penis (and subsequently, the phallus) or differentiation from the clitoris, does it actually exist? As a biological cymeme, its status is uncertain, smudged into an indeterminate mess; should it even actively participate in the formation of meaning if its own formation is so difficult to discern and indistinct? Can it cygnify on its own? Cyborg semiotics would argue that it cannot; it requires technological assistance to cygnify. As such, the phallus is an empty attempt at a cynifier; it carries no true cygnification. The lack of cygnification by the phallus allows the dildo to fulfill the role of the simulacrum according to Baudrillard’s definition, that is, “[t]he simulacrum is never what hides the truth—it is truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true” (Simulacra 1). The successful cygnification of the female body interfacting with the dildo to create meaning contrasts to the absence of meaning of the penis by itself. Patriarchal societies have desperately attempted to assign meaning to the phallus, as doing so creates and reinforces a power structure that requires no explanation or justification. There is no effort required to create the meaning that would be associated with power, simply a state of existence, a biological happenstance.

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However, the dildo interfacting with the body requires a conscious decision to create the desired cyborg. Its cygnifying play calls attention to the lack of inherent meaning in the solely biological phallus, forcing the acknowledgement of the attempted construction of cygnifications despite its limitations, whereas the dildo is fully formed, fully capable of easy interfaction with the body. As the female body with the dildo supplemants the phallus, the boundaries fracture between the prioritization of bodily meaning and the supplemanted cyborg. Cygnification becomes a decision under the control of the cyborg, a conscious choice, not a condition of biological imperatives. It is eternally hard, forever proud and ready, unlike the biological phallus that will inevitably lose its firmness, and as men age, even the ability to become firm without pharmacological assistance (another techneme contributing to cygnification). As such, it hypercygnifies the hollow attempt at cygnification by the unsupplemanted biological phallus. Baudrillard’s definition of the simulacrum provides a ladder of evolutionary cygnification that explains the supplemantary process. Understanding this sequence casts a harsh light on the biological purist’s need to resist the cygnifying capabilities of the cyborg created by a female body with a dildo: • • • • •

it is the reflection of a profound reality it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever; it is its own pure simulacrum. . . .

The transition from signs that dissimulate something to signs that dissimulate that there is nothing marks a decisive turning point. The first reflects a theology of truth and secrecy. . . . The second inaugurates the era of simulacra and simulation, in which there is no longer a God to recognize his own, no longer a Last Judgment to separate the false from the true, the real from its artificial resurrection, as everything is already dead and resurrected in advance. (Baudrillard 1994, 6)

The first component of Baudrillard’s definition appears obvious: the strap-on permits the female body to reflect the (supposed) profound reality that is the male body. As through a mirror darkly, the silhouette created is almost identical to its fully biological counterpart. In many cases, it would be virtually indistinguishable. The next step, that of denaturing that reality, occurs by removing the biological prerequisite from the process of cygnification. The techneme forms the cyborg equitably with its biological counterpart; in fact, it does so better in many ways. The specific biological component of the phallus is readily replaced in the formation of the cyborg. The supplemantation of the strap-on

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denies biological men the sole ability to cygnify as masculine or penetrator. If biological males are not the only ones who can cygnify in this manner, then doing so is not innately “natural” to the male body nor is it their sole province. Baudrillard’s third step is that the simulacra marks the absence of a reality. The presence of the strap-on means the absence of the phallus. While the technological supplemantation can coexist with a biological phallus (double penetrative cygnification, for example) they cannot be in the same place at the same time, and specifically on a biologically female body, the absence of the organic phallus is profoundly obvious. The necessity of a biologically male body within penetrative cygnification is therefore negated. Finally, the simulacra creates its own reality. The dildo is not the phallus, the cyborg with whom it is creating a cyborg is not of necessity or common practice biologically male, nor does the phallus factor into its cygnification. It cygnifies in its own unique manner, creating a profound reality all its own. The existence of the phallus is not necessary for its cygnification, as its meaning without the biological flesh it is accused of mimicking is unique to itself. It requires nothing outside of itself to justify its formation of the cyborg; it is wholly sufficient. And yet the idea of something being sufficient in and of itself raises another Derridian concept, that of sous rature. Spivak attempts to define this slippery concept in her “Translator’s Preface” to Of Grammatology as the word under erasure, which “means to write a word, cross it out, and then print both word and deletion. (Since the word is inaccurate, it is crossed out. Since it is necessary, it remains legible.)” (Spivak 1974, xiv). When a cyborg is supposed to cygnify as masculine or feminine, assumptions are made about both the biological and technological components forming the cyborg and what cygnification the cyborg will convey. Should those components deviate from expectations, creating a cyborg leaning more toward one gendered meaning or the other while missing some of the cymemes typically considered essential for the cyborg’s configuration, the feminine cyborg is considered sous rature in the mainstream cy-syst; it must be uttered, but it is inadequate to express the fullness of the cygnification. An example of this principle would be the aforementioned drag queen, who forms a hyperfeminized cyborg while lacking the biological components traditionally associated with feminine. Even more clearly demonstrating this principle are the images of drag queens in half-drag, cygnifying both masculine and feminine in a self-contained juxtaposition. The cyborg formed rejects easy cygnification, neither masculine nor feminine, and yet it is simultaneously both. Neither can be uttered without being sous rature. This dichotomy reveals Derridian trace; that is, within every sign/cyborg is

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contained its opposite and origin, revealing that in fact, there is no origin (Derrida 1976, 61). In figure 6.1 below, we see a biological body that has interfacted with a variety of technologies, some associated with forming feminine cyborgs and some with masculine. On one side, a beard trimmer has been utilized to form and shape facial hair, and clippers or scissors have interfacted with the hair to create a close-cropped, traditionally masculine shaping of the hairstyle. Other than these few interfactions, the masculine side of the face is relatively untouched by technology. Masculine cygnification requires few technological interfactions to create a cyborg, leaving the face relatively un(re)touched. Conversely, the female side participates in numerous interfactions to create the cyborg. Makeup, including lipstick, eyeshadow, foundation, blush, and mascara, is applied both liberally and precisely, adding unnatural colors, contours, and shading to the face. Fake lashes extend in a fluttering wave below brows that have been plucked by tweezers and shaded by an eyebrow pencil. Facial hair has been removed by a razor, leaving the face smooth to make applying makeup easier. The hair has been carefully styled using a curling iron and hairspray. Dangling earrings frame the face, while a large ring adorns the hand. Each half of the cyborg implies its opposite, the trace of the other, within which it finds its nonexistent origin. Rather than locating the origin of gender in biology, Butler sources it within “stylized repetition of acts” that in turn shape the body through gestures,

Figure 6.1.  In this photo by Marlon Edwards, drag queen SynneR De’Viant Khristian demonstrates the half-drag look, interfacting with different technologies traditionally associated with opposite genders on a single body. Copyright Marlon Edwards. Used with permission.

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movements, and other stylizations (Butler 1990, 179). Without disagreeing with Butler’s premise, I wish to clarify it for the realm of cyborg semiotics. The stylized acts that shape gender and thus movements, and so forth, are technological interfactions. As repeated interfactions with technologies reshaped bodies over generations, so to do repeated individual interfactions shape habits that are regarded as gendered. Walking in heels teaches patterns of walking, wearing a skirt impacts the way one sits, and long fake nails alter the manner in which one types. These acquired patterns become recognizable stylizations that then become identified as biologically gendered rather than technologically influenced configurations. Despite the ease with which technology allows cygnification by any number of bodies through play, trace still dominates cygnifying possibilities. Because the cyborg contains the remnants of its opposite, should the cyborg deviate from the opposite, the construct is rejected as flawed. James Hughes observes the depth of struggle for the right to cygnify by those who do not wish to do so within a strict culturally constructed dichotomy: Even where transsexuals have the right to change genders, they are often underemployed, victims of violence, and find it difficult to afford their sexreassignment treatments. Technology makes possible the control of our sexuality, gender, and reproduction, but it is an ongoing political fight to ensure that society allows us to exercise those rights, and makes available the resources necessary to exercise them. (Hughes 2004, 21–22)

For biological purists, the opposition must be maintained in order preserve the integrity of the biological opposite, and social tradition prevents those who desire to cygnify outside of narrowly constructed social conventions from creating those cyborgs even when they are capable of doing so by interfacting with the appropriate technologies. Derrida’s challenge to the “cybernetic program” has thus been met and conquered. The grapheme is preserved in the cymeme. “Writing” is maintained through cyntagmas of varying sizes and lengths, expressed in time and space as sentences are. Trace has clearly been shown to endure, as cyborgs contain the remnants of their presumed opposite. The historico-metaphysical characteristics of the cygnifying system have been displayed, as its synchronic and diachronic nature has been revealed, as has its role in the creation of what has been incorrectly labeled “human.” Derrida rightfully threw down the gauntlet to the cyborg program. Cyborg semiotics will gladly pick it up and meet his trial on the field of valor.

Conclusion

The death of theory has been loudly and gleefully proclaimed by its detractors and even some of its practitioners for some years. It has in turns been accused of being irrelevant, esoteric to the point that it is incomprehensible and relatively useless, and functional only to a self-congratulatory community of insular practitioners; according to its adversaries, it has turned literature from Sydney’s “meat for the tenderest of stomachs” into the confounding mistiness of the philosophers. It has even been called simply worn out, accomplishing everything that it could possibly hope to do. It is my hope that through cyborg semiotics, theory may be resurrected like Frankenstein’s creation. Once alive and vital, it has been treated by some as moldering in the grave. Yet like the corpse removed from its grave, with carefully administered technological intervention, it may yet be brought into a renewed invigoration with strength, wisdom, and intensity beyond that which it previously possessed. The error made by Dr. Frankenstein was the denial of his creation as an extension of his own cygnifier, and his subsequent abandonment of the creature was not actually a rejection of the creature, but rather abhorrence at the cyborg created by his interfaction with its component cymemes. The meaning of the cyborg that included him caused him to try to separate himself from the creature, but his doing so prevented the creature from learning how to properly create its own cygnification. It is this error that cyborg semiotics seeks to rectify. Humanity can no longer deny the cygnifications created by its cyborgs; doing so has set it on countless destructive paths, from the dual genocides of Native Americans and the slave trade to climate destruction to the rampant anti-vaccination movement during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ownership and accountability for cygnification is crucial to humanity’s understanding of the consequences of its actions, and the refusal to do so has created systemic apathy to the consequences of its cyborgs, cyntagmas, and narratives. The accelerating trend of compartmentalization of knowledge has certainly contributed to the dissociation of technological accountability from those who create and utilize it. The field of cyborg semiotics, for example, might be most easily classified as a field of cultural studies; in fact, this is almost 153

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certainly where it will find its home as it develops, as by current standard definitions, it has no other ready fit. In “Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies,” Stuart Hall notes that “[c]ultural studies has multiple discourses; it has a number of different histories. It is a whole set of formations; it has its own different conjunctures and moments in the past. I included many different kinds of work. . . . It always was a set of unstable formations” (Hall 1992, 278). This flexible definition permits the ready adaptation of this classification for cyborg semiotics. It smoothly integrates into gender theory, race theory, post-colonial theory, and Marxism. However, while each of these focuses on a single aspect of human/ cyborg existence and meaning, cyborg semiotics exposes the intersectionality between these seemingly disparate fields. The structures of oppression, viewed only from a single perspective, seem to require a multitude of solutions; the solution to decolonization, for example, appears to be very different from that of misogyny. Yet when viewed through the perspective of cyborg semiotics, the oppressive structures are built in the same manner; oppressors simply select different arbitrary rationales to implement the systems of oppression by claiming that proper creation of cyborgs necessitates such subjugation. Intersectional feminism calls for unity among women, a recognition that the same oppressive structures that crush one group of women repress them all. Cyborg semiotic extends this recognition to all oppressed groups. It acknowledges the condition of intersectional cybernetic subjugation, that is, the systemic oppression of individuals and groups based on arbitrary factors through the denial of access to cybernetic identities unrelated to their ability to successfully create those identities. It is my hope that various marginalized populations will be able to rally around this concept, uniting their voices against systems of oppression that have claimed to originate in multiplicity, but weaponize, in fact, a singular methodology to create disparate power structures. Because of its versatility, the applications of cyborg semiotics are diverse. Since the cyborg condition is an intrinsic condition, one of its most important applications would be an examination of historical cyborgs. The examination of historical cyborgs and cyntagmas will reveal the underlying structures that encouraged the formation of repressive and unbalanced systems of cybernetic power in ways not previously conceived. By understanding how these structures were formed, not only will the opportunity for dismantling them be afforded, but when new patterns resembling them are still in the formative stages, they may be recognized and circumvented before they can become oppressive. While I do not believe that this is possible anytime soon, a movement away from the sign human to the more accurate cyborg would, first off, be more exact when referring to anything other than the actual body (a human

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corpse, for example). However, terms such as humanity and the human condition should eventually be phased out and replaced with terms that are more inclusive of the technology that creates what is incorrectly referred to as human. While it would be nice to think that these signs could simply evolve to include the technological aspect, Derridian trace will likely prevent such a shift from occurring. Since signs always bear the trace of that which they are not, the organically based human carries the trace of its presumed opposite: technology. This inclusion of this residual opposition denies the possibility of smooth inclusion of technology into human. Neologisms lacking such trace will be required in order to adequately discuss what has until now been referred to as humanity. As such, humanity must be placed under erasure. It simply isn’t sufficient to capture the fullness of the human condition with its technological supplemantation. And yet, somehow cyborg also fails to adequately signify in the proper manner, though it is more accurate than human. The sense of artifice, of clunkiness, of in-addition-to in its connotation belies the natural ease, the requirement of the cyborg condition. The trace contained within these signs is natural, and once again, as this is the trace, it cannot also be the signification itself. There is no sign that carries the proper signification for what humans/ cyborgs are, and until one exists that does not treat the other as trace, having an adequate discussion about humanity/cyborgs will be impossible. While I have created numerous neologisms in this text to allow for discussion of this topic, I will not presume to generate this one. The weight of doing so is too much for my all too “human” shoulders. However, a conversation about our flawed methodologies for creating cyborgs must and should begin, even if it cannot be fully carried out to its utmost extent. The foundation of this discussion should revolve around the arbitrary restrictions used to limit certain bodies from creating cyborgs. These restrictions invariably favor powerful individuals or groups who have seized control of certain forms of cygnification and subsequently restricted access to these forms to others while convincing those who are oppressed that the subjective restrictions placed upon them have some type of innate religious, moral, or logical imperative that prevents them from cygnifying in their desired manner while simultaneously commending themselves for being worthy of their selected form of cygnifying. This deceit is at the heart of every form of racism, sexism, colonialism, homophobia, transphobia, and classism in every culture, in every location, in every time. Such structures will never acknowledge that they have simply reserved select cyborgs for an elite group, holding it up at the ideal while simultaneously degrading or forbidding it to all others not because others are incapable of forming such cyborgs, but because doing so reserves cyborgs of power to their select group. Access to

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power has always been dictated by the ability to cygnify in the manner of those who rule, and failure to do so results in systemic isolation from power. Those who control signifying and cygnifying systems attempt to imbue cyborgs with “natural” meanings, convincing those who are part of that system that the meanings accorded to given cyborgs could not be anything other than that assigned to them by the cy-syst. Any other interpretation than those prescribed by the dominant class must be considered as incorrect (for alternate meanings would permit interpretations that challenge their power). One of the difficulties encountered in the current United States cy-syst (as well as others within the west, such as Great Britain) is the fracturing of meaning for various cyborgs. The inability to reach consensus on what a given construct cygnifies prevents both individual and multi-component cyborgs from not only interpreting individual cyborgs in a comparable manner, but also from creating cyntagmas together that will allow effective and rhetorically consistent communication between themselves and others. Since larger cy-systs, such as “United States,” are composed of many smaller ones, each of which may decode cyborgs differently, these fractured meanings prevent the formation of comprehensible of cybernetic discourse. Ultimately, if left unchecked, this breakdown of meaning will lead to a system collapse for the cy-syst in much the same manner as the Tower of Babel. The inability to effectively communicate will prevent discourse about how to continue building the tower, and eventually, it will either deteriorate because of ineffective maintenance or collapse because of the conflicting attempts to create the structure with incompatible materials and structures. A certain degree of mutual understanding of materials and structures is integral to not only maintaining a cyborg but also to continue building it. Without at least some consensus within the cy-syst, the cyborg will ultimately lose its ability to cygnify. Much of the effort expended by those in power to control cygnification is placed upon emphasizing intrinsic meaning to a technology while ignoring the cyborg itself. By attempting to connect meaning to technological cymemes rather than to cyborgs, those who control the means of production maintain a stranglehold on meaning. This fallacy permits the wealthy who control the creation of technologies to also largely control the meanings created by the cyborgs they constitute, as marketing and social conformity often undermine the possibility of alternative cygnification, though such cygnification would be equitably valid (though as discussed earlier, these techniques may be undermined). These tactics on behalf of corporations encourage focused usage of technologies in creating cyborgs, limiting technologies to cyborgs that create maximum profit for the corporation, especially if such cyborgs interfact smoothly with other cyborgs whose technology is also created by the same corporation or even partnered corporations.

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Neocyborgisms, in the vein of neologisms, that would challenge the supremacy of existing cyborgs are met with fierce resistance from manufacturers of technemes (unless, of course, they control the subsequent cyborg as well), as these competitors would not only undermine the profits of those creating them, but would also permit shifting the existing cybernetic narratives away from the control of those who currently regulate them. An excellent example of this exercise of power is the present stranglehold the oil and gas industries exert over the energy narrative. The companies who control these technologies not only have a vested profit interest in maintaining the supremacy of these exiting cyntagmas, but they also control the narrative around the energy industry through the entrenchment of the meanings behind the cyborgs and the cyntagmatic units. Cyborgs such as oil field, gas station, and even automobile with all of the organic and technological cymemes comprising them are under the direct or indirect control of these powerful multibillion dollar corporations. By controlling the technemes associated with these industries, they shape worldwide cybernetic narratives in directions which favor themselves both economically and ideologically. Since their control of these narratives originate in controlling the technemes which form certain cyborgs, they have a vested interest in ensuring that capitalism remains the dominant economic paradigm. If capitalism breaks down within western culture, alternative cyborgs may be formed that allow new cyntagmas to assume the dominant narrative to the detriment of those who currently control the existing narratives. One of the ways in which existing narratives are reinforced is by negatively contrasting cyborgs from an outside cy-syst with those within one’s own. Bodies who interfact with military technologies in opposition to governments hostile to cy-syts with which one is associated form cyborgs such as freedom fighter, even when they attack government buildings or cause civilian casualties. However, if the same cymemes form a cyborg in opposition to a favored government, they are interpreted under categories such as terrorist. The composition of the cyborg is unchanged, but the meaning assigned to it varies according to the cy-syst within which it is being interpreted. Linguistically, for example, this error would be comparable to intentionally misunderstanding homonyms. Take, for instance, the English word sea and the Spanish word sí. With some minor variations that could just as easily be variations of inflection for either word, these cyborgs have comparable phonemes to that point that one could be easily mistaken for the other. While the phonetic composition is almost the same, the meaning assigned to resultant sign is vastly different: a large body of water versus an affirmation. The elite who control production of technemes within a cy-syst fight to dictate the interpretation of cyborgs that conflict with their chosen narratives, even when these cyborgs are formed outside of their cy-cyst but are

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comprised of the exact same cymemes that form cyborgs that they favor when created within their own cy-syst (or ones friendly to it). The external cyborgs are considered malevolent and malign while those created within their own cy-syst (often to their own personal profit through ownership of the technological means of production) formed with the same technologies are beneficent and benevolent. The ability to recast cyborgs comprised of the same cymemes as having two completely different meanings according to the cy-syst within which it being interpreted demonstrates that meaning lies not within the cyborg itself, but rather that cyborgs have no meaning outside of a cy-syst. It is only the interpretive matrix of the cy-syst that permits meaning to be formed. Attempts to prevent these oppositional cyborgs from forming both within and without a cy-syst are often rooted in either incorrectly assigning cygnification to a technology without an interfacting body or by claiming that bodies cygnify without technologies beyond those bodies’ capability to contain meaning without technological cymemes. If a techneme has meaning absent a body, then bodies neither add meaning to that cymeme nor have responsibility for the meaning; it is a thing unto itself, homogenous and complete. If these faux and fractured cyborgs are presumed to be whole, attempts to alter them would be pointless, short-circuiting resistance before it may begin since their meanings are set. If “lipstick,” for example, already has a meaning of feminine beauty that is separate from an interfacting body, cyborgs formed by a male body with “lipstick” must be rejected because “lipstick” has its own meaning that is (supposedly) incompatible with a male body. By assigning an arbitrary preexisting meaning to the technology, opportunities for cyborgs to form are precluded by these presumed prior meanings. If a meaning is a priori attached to a techneme, trying to form any cyborg that has a meaning that deviates from that imbued to it may be rejected as aberrant due to conflicting cygnification. By incorrectly linking meaning to technologies separate from bodies, reproduction of existing cyborgs and, thus, narratives formed by those cyborg, is ensured, as the reproduction of the technologies will likewise ensure reproduction of meaning. Bodies that are disempowered are told that their bodies are incapable of interfacting with technemes that form cyborgs with meanings associated with power. For example, imagine a linguistic structure in which the only words that carried meanings associated with power contained the letter “c.” Rather than assigning meaning to the word, a meaning is assigned to the letter. A rule could then be created stating that only the vowel “i” could be in a sign containing “c,” or perhaps other vowels could be in the word, but not in near proximity to it. This arbitrary rule would then prevent the formation of signs indicating power that contain “a,” reserving that right for “i.” The argument

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then becomes not that the “a” cannot carry the meaning contained by the word containing “c,” but simply that “a” is incompatible with “c” and is thus denied access to any significations carried by words containing “c.” However, if every word bearing signification of power includes “c,” “a” is then precluded from participating in a sign that signifies power. “I,” meanwhile, dominates discussions of power to the point that power becomes associated incorrectly with the letter rather than the sign. Since all signs that signify power contain “i,” power becomes associated with letter “i” rather than with the signification of the full sign. The assumption is that “i” itself is a signifier of power rather than the full sign; what letters surround it become irrelevant if one is utilizing mental shorthand to automatically provide signification. However, it is not “i” that signifies power, but signs that contain “c” (though this too is arbitrary). “I” is simply the only vowel permitted to connect to that “c” and create signs of authority; as such, it becomes a proxy for the full sign with the assumption that any sign containing “i” will signify power. The consequences of this linguistic trap are manifold. Not only is “a” excluded from forming existing signs of power, but even if new signs are formed that attempt to signify in such a manner, they will be dismissed as incapable of doing so not because the desired signification is lacking, but because the signifier does not contain the expected components. As such, those reading it might simply assume it cannot be signifying power, even if such signification is within the definition. Likewise, the cyborgs of power are formed with specific technologies. Certain technological cymemes and borgmemes are used repeatedly as part of such cyborgs. Those who control these technological cymemes and borgmemes limit access to them to the bodies of members of their own groups, insisting that others are inherently incapable of successful interfaction. This restriction prevents disempowered groups from participating in the cyborgs of power, both in the present and future. The argument is not that such bodies do not deserve to have access to cygnifying power, but rather that they are incapable of performing the necessary interfactions to do so. Even when disempowered bodies manage to do so, they are dismissed as the exception to the rule, as in Samuel Johnson’s notorious quote, “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” If cyborgs that allow oppositional forces to create the cygnification of alternative truths may not be formed, dominant narratives may continue to replicate freely. The current insistence, for example, of the petroleum industry that alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, and nuclear are not feasible while collecting massive profits and dominating the energy narrative through cyntagmas such as pipelines, energy grids, and oil fields permits the reproduction of cyborgs that continue to support them. In

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America, any cyborgs that begin to coalesce that might form alternative cyntagmas are attacked, undermined, accused of creating unpatriotic cygnifications, or deemed incapable of containing comparable cygnification as those containing petroleum products as technemes. Since the desired cygnification is supposedly impossible due to the false conflicting cygnification, an alternative negative cygnification may be assigned, rendering it undesirable. This strategy is comparable to treating emerging dialects or accents as inferior and forcing people to learn the accent of the dominant class should they wish to participate in the current power structure. African Americans, for example, have often commented on the need to code switch between the dialect spoken at home and the one required to participate in white society. While African American Vernacular English (AAVE) has equitable linguistic infrastructures in comparison to Standard American English (SAE), the latter is considered “appropriate,” while AAVE is considered by mainstream (white) society as inferior, though it is constantly appropriating words, phrases, and linguistic structures from AAVE and incorporating them into itself. This is a comparable strategy practiced by those who control the production of technemes. They will desperately reject any intrusion of new cymemes and/or cyborgs into their cyntagmas, unless they can manage to seize control of such cyborgs and use them for their own benefit. The attempt to force bodies to cygnify without technemes is a common thread throughout historic oppression. Though bodies may cygnify, these meanings are exceptionally limited, though they are often granted more meaning than they deserve. While a body may be male, female, black, white, Hispanic, trans, and so forth, the amount of cygnification sans technological interfaction is limited to existence as me and my bodily characteristics. The diversity of cygnification is limited, though not the power or intensity of meaning. Much like “I,” this is not an inconsequential cygnification, but it lacks diversity. As soon as technemes interfact with the body, the diversity of cygnification increases exponentially. Technemes act as a force multiplier of possibilities for cygnification by including a wider variety of cymemes into a cyborg. The stakes for the application of this theory are nothing less than the shaping of society. There is currently tremendous potential for such transformation, though the results of such attempts are incredibly uncertain. As bell hooks discusses, some of the prospective transformations that could occur coming from post-modernism and cyborg semiotics seek to fulfill this promise. Hooks comments that [t]he overall impact of postmodernism is that many other groups now share with black folks a sense of deep alienation, despair, uncertainty, loss of a sense of grounding even if it is not informed by shared circumstances. Radical

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postmodernism calls attention to those shared sensibilities which cross the boundaries of class, gender, race, etc. that could be fertile ground for the construction of empathy—ties that would promote recognition of common commitments and serve as a base for solidarity and coalition. (hooks 1981, 2513)

The internet provides an interesting opportunity to expand upon this empathy. People who have in the past been isolated by their own geographic constraints can observe cyborgs utilized by others beyond their own local cy-syst. Much like learning a language, observing the interfactions of cyborgs with which they were previously unfamiliar provides the opportunity for mental expansion. Learning words from other languages allows the creation of thoughts previously inaccessible since they have no form in the currently spoken language; they have not yet been cut from the whole cloth of all ideas possible. There is no signifier to shape the signification. Similarly, without a construct to delimit cygnification, concepts are left unknown and unknowable. By virtually observing constructs and cyborgs that one might never have the opportunity to see within their own cy-syst, opportunities arise to understand concepts foreign to one’s own. Through this understanding, concepts that once seemed alien or even hostile to one’s own may be understood to be benign or even friendly, even permitting integration of these cyborgs into a cy-syst that may have previously rejected it as abject. For example, a small, rural town in Oklahoma may have a strong religious fundamentalist leaning. The adherence to a traditional nuclear family is often a part of such cy-systs, leading to the rejection of LGBTQIA+ people as an incorrect and blasphemous pronunciation of family. However, through exposure to cyborgs comprised of such cymemes online and understanding how these cyborgs function perfectly well to create cygnification, resistance to their integration into their own cy-syst may be lessened. As with language, such change may not be embraced by the older generation, especially since their exposure to online cyborgs may be limited and they have been conditioned to only accept specific observation patterns, but younger people may prove to be more open to accepting these cyborgs. Members of rural populations that are isolated geographically are often denied access to regular exposure to cyborgs outside of those in their own communities, leading to a narrow view of the permissibility of cyborgs beyond those formed by those within their towns. Through internet exposure, the chance to observe alternative cyborgs that do not disrupt or damage other cy-systs may lead at least some to permit integration of these cyborgs into their own. The current efforts of the Biden administration to expand internet to rural areas is a crucial step in opening the doors for such exposure, as it will allow inhabitants of these communities to understand how cyborgs are formed outside of their local dialects.

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Unfortunately, exposure to these cyborgs does not always equate to acceptance—far from it. However, it does open the door to the possibility of meaningful dialogue. The opposite is also true, though. Far too often, communities self-select online, leading to an echo chamber that reinforces current cyborgs and cy-systs while decrying any outside of their own. Exposure to a variety of cygnification online is viewed as the rejection of traditional cyborgs rather than a reflection of the variety of cyborgs that have always been present within a large cy-syst. Members of communities that have little exposure to cygnification outside of that practiced within their small circle assume that their form of cygnification is the baseline, the “correct” form of cygnifying, unaware that other types of cygnification are common and neither disrupt nor prevent their own forms of cygnifying. Their fear of their methods of cygnifying being undermined or altered often leads to fierce backlash to conserve their own narrowly practiced methods of cygnification, even at the expense of others’ ability to practice their own forms of cygnifying. However, this rejection is comparable to a community rejecting soda because pop is their preferred vernacular. While the internet provides opportunities to view others using cybernetic vernacular outside the community’s confines, the equitable opportunity to self-select other communities that practice the same types of cygnifying practiced within isolated communities can also reinforce the belief that one’s own form of cygnification is indeed the ideal. Algorithms on social media that select cyborgs comparable to those previously viewed further isolate the viewers within their own practiced forms of cygnification, restricting opportunities to expand cygnifying vocabulary. Such algorithms actively work against mutual understanding in favor of capitalistic pursuits, reinforcing existing ways of knowing in order to turn a profit through ready fortification of predisposed cygnification. It is this retention of a narrow range of cygnifying that the current conservative movement is desperately fighting for. The base principle of conservatism means to conserve, to retain. In this case, they are fighting to retain methods of cygnification that they believe harken back to an idealized past; thus the phrase, “Make America Great Again.” At the core of this now cliched term is the desire to retain their concept of a time when America cygnified in their preferred manner that benefited certain groups (read cis white males). They wish to reincarnate a cy-syst that has already passed by temporally. Such attempts ultimately prove fruitless. Imagine attempting to resurrect Latin as the primary language in America. While many of the words we speak have Latinate roots, and some of them still resemble their original root words to an extent, a significant percentage have evolved to become almost unrecognizable. In addition, words from other languages have become part of the common lexicon, and prising them from common parlance would be a near impossible feat. Concepts unknown

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during the heyday of Latin have also arisen, requiring neologisms to contain their signification. A reversion to Latin would not only be impossible, but it would also require stripping the knowledge gained in the interim. Words evolved to contain and describe newly created concepts as well as reflect cultural evolution. To strip the language of the ability to accurately speak about these concepts would simultaneously remove the concepts themselves. To “Make America Great Again” in the manner desired requires an understanding of how this supposed greatness was achieved and at whose expense. The American cy-syst was formed to benefit white, male, property holders (the only ones who were initially allowed to participate in governance of the infantile American Republic), denying any others access to the cymemes necessary to create cyborgs carrying cygnification that would uplift or empower them. Since these cyborgs reinforced the elite’s belief in their own superiority, any challenge to altering these cyborgs was met with fierce resistance; they were viewed by those in power as attempts to harm them rather than extending comparable meanings to others. All cyborgs within the cy-syst were forced to praise the white cis male, carrying both connotative and denotative meanings that rendered others inferior. A simple example is the bakery that refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. The act of baking the cake and selling it would prove no inconvenience to the bakery; it is the function of the bakery. The bakery did not want to provide the techneme (the cake) to create the cyborg participating in the cyntagma the couple was attempting to form (their marriage and ensuing life together). They believed that their participation in the creation of the cake tied them to overall cyntagmatic unit through their production of the techmeme. As such, they believed that denial of access to the techneme based on their attempt to conserve an older formation of the cyborg based on their religious preferences was within their rights, just as people who denied access to technologies used by whites to African Americans believed they had the right to do so based on so-called religious bias; in a comparable manner to the bakery case, miscegenation laws reinforced their legal right to deny interracial couples access to technemes necessary for the formation of family, limiting the meaning of committed homosexual couples to alternative lifestyle. Because of its need for uniformity of meaning, organized religion invariably attempts to fix the cygnification of cyborgs with little room for play (this feature is not unique to Christianity; it is invariably engrained to one degree or another in every organized religion). Highly structured religion condemns alternate cygnification because it needs lockstep obedience from its adherents in order to survive. Alternative cygnification would wreak havoc with the monolithic texts (Bible, Quran, Torah, etc.) that form the cornerstones of their beliefs, exposing potential flawed foundational cygnification. Paradoxes between text, practice, and belief in forming cyborgs and cyntagmas are

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either ignored or justified through mental gymnastics of Olympian skill. To use Christianity as an example (which I draw upon because of my familiarity with it as I was originally a seminarian), ready condemnation is hurled toward same sex couples by women who wear gold and expose their hair as well as men who had premarital sex and wear polycotton blends, all of which are expressly forbidden by their chosen scriptures. The selective choice of which forbidden constructs are now acceptable and which are not are based solely upon the individual’s desire to cygnify in the manner they chose and enforce that cygnification on others and not upon any inherent merit of the construct or cyborg itself. Technemes that are supposedly forbidden are excused based on personal desires. One of the most difficult issues that arise with this attempt at preserving cygnification is the cross-cultural boundaries within cygnification. For example, in the church I was raised in (Seventh-Day Adventist), monogamy has been the common practice among its followers dating back to its inception. Polygamous relationships are not accepted as a reasonable construct for family. However, in many African communities, polygamy is common practice, and most people within those communities of both genders refused to convert to Adventism if they had to abandon this practice. With numerous examples of polygamy sanctioned by God in the Bible, including among the patriarchs, the church relented and allowed adherents of polygamy to convert in these communities with their blessing while simultaneously condemning the same behavior in the United States and other locales. Trying to fix a cyborg across cultural boundaries and maintain identical cygnification is an impossible feat, and yet one that organized religion desperately fights for. Invariably, the result is the cyborgs created outside of the original cy-syst are viewed as inferior to those within the foundational cy-syst as they do not adhere as closely to the originating cy-syst’s dictates; some meaning is always lost in translation. Tied to cultural translation is temporal translation. Without severe coaching and intense study, a modern person would be hard pressed to understand Old English, even though modern English is a direct descendent of it. Many of these letters no longer exist in modern English, such as the letter thorn. Someone reading a sign with thorn in it would have no framework for understanding how to pronounce it, much less what it meant. In addition to the sign being unfamiliar, the signified would also lack context. Even with strenuous study, one could only approximate the original meaning of the sign; they will never utilize it on a daily basis in the same manner as their forbearers. Without the lived experience of the sign and the world in which it existed, the true signification is lost. Conversely, modern English has letters the earlier version lacked, such a “j.” The phonemes created by these letters were not a part of the language

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prior to their introduction, nor were the words created by them. While the signification of the words utilizing these phonemes are arbitrary, their introduction allows for a wider variety of signifiers simply through their existence (modern English has twenty-sixletters compared to twenty-four in Old English). The sheer quantity of technemes available means that the potential for creation of cyborgs has also increased, though the meanings associated with them are still arbitrary; while the quantity of letters available numbers a mere twenty-six, technologies number in the thousands. Cygnification becomes an incredibly complex and nuanced process with each individual cymeme playing a small role forming cyborgs with minute differences. This quantity of potential meaning opens venues for subtle differentiations of meaning that were unavailable prior to the introduction of the mass of techmemes currently available to form cyborgs. Trying to apply the broader strokes of meaning from ancient cyborgs to the modern cyborgs using a wider variety of cymemes simply falls apart. Attempts to maintain these older significations would be like trying to maintain continuity between covered wagon and stock car. While there is some overlap in cygnification, both the cymemes composing the cyborgs as well as the cygnification of the formed cyborgs have been drastically altered. Despite these glaring differences, modern conservative thought in the United States attempts to apply rules of cybernetic grammar from two centuries ago (or in many cases, six millenia ago) that was attached to the older cyborgs to the new ones, thinking that not only will the older meaning still apply, but the grammatical rules will still hold up, even if the cyborg no longer fits in the same category. Google, for instance, began as the name of a company but now functions as a verb. Trying to treat the verb form as a noun just because that was its initial part of speech can result in a clear misunderstanding of a syntagmatic unit. Even if a cyborg remains in the same grammatical section, the cygnification possess the potential for changed meaning. Take mass murderer, for instance. Using a firearm from two centuries ago, achieving this cygnification would likely take time, resulting in a high probability of being restrained before achieving this cygnification; creating this cyborg using modern technology is simpler. However, modern technology permits the rapid formation of this cyborg because of the simplicity of the interfaction, and yet conservative thought wants the cybernetic grammatical rules which govern the spelling of this cyborg and the subsequent cyntagmatic unit to remain the same as when the cyborg was much more difficult to form despite the fact that in common parlance the lack of such rules results in a tremendous increase in cyborgs associated with school shootings, organized crime, and domestic violence. If the dissemination of the techneme “modern firearm” was curtailed, forming cyntagmatic units with these types of cyborgs as their subject would prove significantly more difficult.

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Prioritizing religious meanings over common parlance contributes to this problem by declaring that there is an a priori meaning to all cyborgs. Since according to this philosophy all of these categories and grammatical structures have been predetermined, it is humanity’s job to fit all these signs into pre-existing boxes, ignoring their actual functions and/or meanings. Organized religion attempts to remove the current meaning of a cyborg and translate it into its own cygnification. This rhetorical strategy is like claiming that there is an original sacred language beginning in creation and that everyone must filter modern thought through. Only the chosen priests can reveal the meaning of this language (and, of course, they will translate it to their benefit). Another difficulty faced by religion is the desire to preserve cygnification even when the construct has vanished. This is almost assured to happen as a religion crosses cultural boundaries. While the connection between construct and cygnified is arbitrary, and as such, theoretically such transposition is possible, from a practical standpoint, when the construct is altered it is often due to the cygnification changing and a reciprocal desire by users to alter the construct to reflect it. Christian holidays provide an excellent example of this dichotomy. Christmas, for instance, is commonly thought of as originating in Christianity. A huge percentage of the cymemes associated with it, though, originally formed cyborgs associated with pagan traditions; the smaller cyborgs that comprise the overall cyborg of Christmas are steeped in denotations from paganism. The borgmemes within the larger cyborg maintain much of their own cygnification, ever so slightly altering the meaning of the larger cyborg. Maintaining Christian religious cygnification when the cyborg has so many borgmemes within it carrying cygnification that differs from that spiritual tradition is nearly impossible. With these borgmemes woven throughout, attempting to maintain a cygnification closely related to that of Christianity exclusively will not be possible. Trace also prevents religious cyborgs from easily crossing cultural boundaries. Returning to the example of marriage, within most modern Western cultures this cyborg carries traces of polygamy. However, within the African cultures previously discussed, polygamy is part of the cygnification of marriage. When trying to move religious cynification from one culture to another, the cyborg struggles with the transfer because the trace from one culture may conflict with the meaning in another. While alternative cygnification between cultures is not problematic in most cases, when the supposedly proper cygnification has been decreed by God, local cultural cygnifications must be sacrificed in order to maintain the cygnification of the originating culture, even if the trace demands otherwise. This creates conflicting cygnifications leading to debasement of the transferred cyborg.

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Cyborgs are communication. They are meaning. They are lived language. Language is a simple social contract of agreed upon meanings. We have the choice to determine what meanings are available to what bodies. We can be better. We can evolve. De Chardin observes, If, through technology, evolution is making a fresh bound, at the same time it is becoming reflective. . . . Evolution has now to make its own choice. So long as true freedom did not exist life seemed to grope its way forward; now that man has become conscious, reflective, and responsible for dispositions on which the rest of the process is based, a direction must be found: life can no longer proceed at random—technology brings with it the inescapable necessity of an ideology. (de Chardin 1947, 161)

What ideology we chose does not have to be based in the repressive strictures of our predecessors. Technology provides the opportunity for growth, understanding, and unity, if we recognize that it is not merely contiguous with our identities, but instead it is the woof to our warp; without both, there is no tapestry. In The Soul of Man under Socialism, Oscar Wilde comments that “[a] map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias” (11). The attempt to revert to prior cygnifications inverts this progress; it strives to undermine the attainment of utopian ideals, choosing instead to preserve older cyborgs and anchor the ships on the shore with a better future in sight across the channel, keeping those who strive for growth stranded on the beach, pining for a new utopia just a few knots away.

Glossary

Construct—The collection of cymemes (technemes and ganmemes) that form the physical components of a cyborg. Just as a specific collection of letters must be associated with a meaning (signified) to form a word, so too must a collection of cymemes be associated with a meaning (cygnified) to form a cyborg. Cy-cyst—A system of cyborgs that is governed by cultural rules of interpretation. These cyborgs must be both created and interpreted according to these rules in order to form a cy-syst. The system of cygnification must be studied separately from the function of the technology. In Saussurian terms, this would be la langue. Cyber-gibberish—Technologies and bodies interfacting in a manner that produces no meaningful cygnification within a particular cy-syst. What is cyber-gibberesh within one cy-syst, however, may signify within another. Cyber-grammar—The study of the rules that dictate the interfactions between cyborgs. Cyber-spelling—The study of the rules that control the composition of individual cyborgs. Cyborg—The combination of a construct and a cygnified; the cyborg requires both in order to function within a cy-syst. A distinct unit comprised of a minimum of one organic and one machinic component interfacting with each other in a homeostatic relationship. While the homeostasis may be temporary, it still permits the identification of the cyborg as a construct. Cygnified—The socially constructed concept to which a particular construct refers. Together with a construct, a cygnified forms a cyborg. 169

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Cyllabics—Cybernetic syllables consisting of cymemes that form beats, though not necessarily meaning, within a larger cyborg. Cymeme—The cybernetic equivalent of phonemes. The two types are ganmemes and technemes. Cyntagmatic—The sequence of cyborgs in relation to each other. This relationship is both spatial and temporal, as both factors impact the resultant cygnification. Ganmeme—A type of cymeme consisting of an organic body; the rough cybernetic equivalent of a vowel. Interfaction—A combination of interface and interact, interfaction refers to the intimate connection between either the organic and machinic components of a cyborg or the connections between two different cyborgs. Supplemant—That which both supplements and supplants another. Technology, for example, serves in this role for humanity, as it adds to human capability, but may also replace it. Technologies may also supplemant each other, as may cyborgs. Techneme—A type of cyneme consisting of an individual technology. The rough equivalent of a consonant.

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Index

arbitrary nature of the cyborg/sign, 4, 13, 63–69, 92, 95, 97, 110, 127, 132–35, 154, 165–66; as a challenge to the invariability of the sign, 71–72 Aristotle, 15–16, 54 Baudrillard, Jean, 12, 43–45, 49, 149 borgmemes, 48–50, 82, 88–89, 121, 125, 159, 166; and artistic representation, 52; bodies as, 88; in cyllables, 57; definition, 46; in gyres, 120; in transformative cygnification, 83; undifferentiated, 115; value determination, 50–55 circuit of communication, 29–31, 38, 103–4, 108–9, 111 Clark, Andy, 7–9, 19, 29–30, 71, 74, 144 Clynes, Manfred and Nathan S. Kline, 18–19 components, 3–5, 7, 9, 11–12, 23–25, 29, 31–32, 36–37, 46, 68, 93, 125–26, 131, 134, 141, 150, 159; and constructs, 3; and psychological isolation from ourselves, 17; and self-regulating systems, 18; transparent vs. opaque, 19–20

constructs, 18, 30–31, 77, 82, 140, 152, 156, 161, 164; compositional change and variances, 64–67; definition, 3, 169; diagram explaining, 62; with female ganmemes, 116–18; inertia of cygnification, 70; and inscription methodologies, 112; linear nature, 69, 89; and religion, 166; as signifier, 63; spatial and temporal proximity of cymemes, 89–90 cyborg: The Cyborg Handbook, 6, 91; dialects, 3; does vs. means, 10, 34–35, 38, 40, 44; grammar, 3; identity, 8–10, 18–22, 29; phonetics, 43; puns, 53–54; spelling, 3, 46–48 cymemes, 46–51, 72, 76, 80–83, 113, 117–18, 145, 148, 150, 153, 156–60, 163, 165; and associative elements, 125–27; cyborg formation, 63–68, 76–79, 88; cyllabics, 56–58; definition, 46, 170; digital, 122; and grammar, 130–31; interfactions, ease of, 90; lost or gained, 58–59; quantity and difficulties that arise, 72–75, 100; and religion, 109, 161, 166; sequencing, 69–70, 89; spatial and temporal sequencing in a construct, 89–90; and supplementation, 142; translation, 175

176

Index

115; value determination, 50–55, 90–92, 95–97, 114 cy-syst, 3–4, 10–12, 20, 22–23, 30–31, 35–37, 48, 74, 78, 80, 91, 119, 157–58, 163; arbitrary nature of the cyborg/sign, 63–69, 91–92; and cultural appropriation, 52–53; and cyllabics, 56–59; and cymemes, 46, 48–49; definition, 31, 169; delimitations, 25; dual ownership, 27–28; entanglement, 71; evolution, 78–79; formal vs. informal, 39–40; fracturing, 156; and gender, 97, 132–33, 136; geography, 40–41; and grammar, 136; inscription methodologies, 113; internal vs. external, 25, 37–39, 43–45; and the internet, 161–62; invariability of the cyborg/sign, 74–76; as la langue, 12; and neutrality, 85; nonlinearity, 89; observation patterns, 63; physicality, 23–24; social impetus to form cyborgs, 94; and sous rature, 150; spelling, 36–37, 55–56, 77; and stability, 88, 100, 164; and supplementation, 145–48; synchronic vs. diachronic examination, 81–83; as systems, 25–26; temporality, 24, 50; translation, 32–34; tripartite composition, 26–27; values within, 93, 115

119, 121, 131, 145, 148; definition, 46, 170; and individual bodies, 88; as vowels, 46, 134 grammar, cyborg, 3, 35, 38, 76, 87, 119, 128–37, 165; definition, 169 Gray, Chris Hables, 6, 19, 21

de Beauvoir, Simone, 30–31, 35, 96 dialects, 3, 58, 136, 160–61

spelling, cyborg, 3, 36

Frankenstein, 17–18, 153 ganmemes, 48, 52–55, 65, 79, 82, 85, 88, 90, 96, 99, 103, 113, 116–17,

Haraway, Donna, 1, 6, 16, 21, 83, 85, 91, 96, 111–13, 147; A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism, 1 human, definition, 5, 8 interfactions, 4, 7, 20, 47, 50; corporeal vs. cognizant, 11–12; and cy-systs, 24–25; formation, 23–24; temporality, 24 Lacan, Jaques, 2 la langue, 4, 12 la parole, 12, 23 Mazlish, Bruce, 17 Muri, Allison, 15–16, 50 null-value signification, 4 observation pattern, 36, 47; and cultural appropriation, 52–53 psychoanalysis, 2

Taylor, Timothy, 7, 28, 49 technemes, 43, 45–46, 48; definition, 46 technologies, 10–11; corporeal vs. cognizant, 10–12; transparent vs. opaque, 18–22

About the Author

Mick Howard has been an avid science fiction fan since he was a small child. He still holds the record for the most overdue library books in his hometown library, since returning books meant he could no longer read them. The “what-if” possibilities of technological interactions fascinated him, as these works of literature opened the swinging doors of both human potential as well as doom. After working for several years as a successful executive recruiter, he quit a high-paying job with a company he helped found and moved with his wife and three young children to Alaska, a lovely 2,400 mile road trip, to start over as a graduate student. There he discovered Donna Haraway, Chris Hables Gray, and other cyborg theorists, which inspired him to create cyborg semiotics. He is currently the director of the Writing Center at Langston University, the only Historically Black College/University in the state of Oklahoma.

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