How We Become Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics

Hayles, N. Katherine, How We Become Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1999. On line at link as of 4 July 2019.[1]

Mainly a collection of Hayles's essays from the 1990s (see Acknowledgments, pp. ix-x), with a Prologue, Conclusion, and apparatus. An influential collection by an important scholar.

1. Toward Embodied Virtuality /  1 
2. Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers / 25 
3. Contesting for the Body of Information: The Macy Conferences on Cybernetics / 50 
4. Liberal Subjectivity Imperiled: Norbert Wiener and Cybernetic Anxiety / 84 
5. From Hyphen to Splice: Cybernetic Syntax in Limho / 113 
6. The Second Wave of Cybernetics: From Reflexivity to Self-Organization / 131 
7. Turning Reality Inside Out and Right Side Out: Boundary Work in the Mid-Sixties Novels of Philip K. Dick / 160 
8. The Materiality of Informatics / 192 
9. Narratives of Artificial Life / 222 
10. The Semiotics of Virtuality: Mapping the Posthuman /  247 
11. Conclusion: What Does It Mean to Be Posthuman? / 283 

RDE, completing, 4July19