Forms of Technological Embodiment: Reading the Body in Contemporary Culture

Balsamo, Anne. "Forms of Technological Embodiment: Reading the Body in Contemporary Culture." In Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Development. Roger Burrows and Mike Featherstone, eds. London: SAGE, 1995. Online Publication Date: 31 May 31.

From Judy (sic: no last name), "'Anne Balsamo’s “Forms of Technological Embodiment,'" 27 June 2013.[1]

The ‘cyborg’ – the technological-human – has become a familiar figuration of the subject of postmodernity […] this merger relies on a reconceptualization of the human body as a boundary figure belonging simultaneously to at least two previously incompatible systems of meaning – ‘the organic/natural’ and the ‘technological/cultural’  (215) .

Balsamo argues that the body and technology are joined in a literal sense, where machines assume organic functions and the body is materially redesigned through the use of corporeality. The “natural” body has been refashioned since the 1980s, where the idea of the merging of the biological with the technological became prevalent in Western thought.

See for work, labor, and labor in terms of "the maternal body" (quoting Judy).

RDE, completing, 28May19