Viral Cyborgs, Viruses, and Virtual Technologies
Abstract
This presentation has roots in cyborg feminism of Donna Haraway’s “Manifesto for Cyborgs” (1983), which theorized bodies as biological and technological hybrids and blurred the boundaries between human and non/human. I explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the ways in which technoscience produces, what Schneider (2012) describes as, viral cyborgs out of us all. I am interested in how bodies materialize in and with the viral and how the viral materializes in and with our bodies—biologically, technologically, and pedagogically. I am most interested in how virtual technologies have been used to shape how we make sense or nonsense of the science of how these biomedical technologies can be used to protect against, prevent, and treat COVID-19. I am concerned with exploring the relationship between virtual and material bodies, given that our interconnections with technology, as a tool for combating the viral spread of disease while simultaneously spreading viral dis/information, have been central to our embodied experience in the pandemic. The curricular intervention I offer is grounded in feminist technoscience and new materialist approaches that call for engaging with scientific knowledge about the biological effects of viruses while simultaneously exploring the material consequences of virtual technologies as a way to critically read a technoscientific world.
Presentation Description
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Location
Room 107
Publication Type and Release Option
Presentation (Open Access)
Recommended Citation
Hudson, Stephanie, "Viral Cyborgs, Viruses, and Virtual Technologies" (2022). Curriculum Studies Summer Collaborative. 41.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cssc/2022/2022/41
Viral Cyborgs, Viruses, and Virtual Technologies
Room 107
This presentation has roots in cyborg feminism of Donna Haraway’s “Manifesto for Cyborgs” (1983), which theorized bodies as biological and technological hybrids and blurred the boundaries between human and non/human. I explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the ways in which technoscience produces, what Schneider (2012) describes as, viral cyborgs out of us all. I am interested in how bodies materialize in and with the viral and how the viral materializes in and with our bodies—biologically, technologically, and pedagogically. I am most interested in how virtual technologies have been used to shape how we make sense or nonsense of the science of how these biomedical technologies can be used to protect against, prevent, and treat COVID-19. I am concerned with exploring the relationship between virtual and material bodies, given that our interconnections with technology, as a tool for combating the viral spread of disease while simultaneously spreading viral dis/information, have been central to our embodied experience in the pandemic. The curricular intervention I offer is grounded in feminist technoscience and new materialist approaches that call for engaging with scientific knowledge about the biological effects of viruses while simultaneously exploring the material consequences of virtual technologies as a way to critically read a technoscientific world.
