Cyborg - (MIT Press Essential Knowledge) by Laura Forlano & Danya Glabau (Paperback)

About the Book

"Using the non-human construct of the cyborg, this book address the problems inherent in difference and oppression, like gender, race, class, disability, sexuality, human exceptionalism and global borders"--

Book Synopsis

A concise introduction to cyborg theory that examines the way in which technology is situated, political, and embodied.

This introduction to cyborg theory provides a critical vantage point for analyzing the claims around emerging technologies like automation, robots, and AI. Cyborg analyzes and reframes popular and scholarly conversations about cyborgs from the perspective of feminist cyborg theory. Drawing on their combined decades of training, teaching, and research in the social sciences, design, and engineering education, Laura Forlano and Danya Glabau introduce an approach called critical cyborg literacy. Critical cyborg literacy foregrounds power dynamics and pays attention to the ways that social and cultural factors such as gender, race, and disability shape how technology is imagined, developed, used, and resisted.

Forlano and Glabau offer critical cyborg literacy as a way of thinking through questions about the relationship between humanity and technology in areas such as engineering and computing, art and design, and health care and medicine, as well as the social sciences and humanities. Cyborg examines whether modern technologies make us all cyborgs--if we consider, for instance, the fact that we use daily technologies at work, have technologies embedded into our bodies in health care applications, or use technology to critically explore possibilities as artists, designers, activists, and creators. Lastly, Cyborg offers perspectives from critical race, feminist, and disability thinkers to help chart a path forward for cyborg theory in the twenty-first century.

Review Quotes

"An excellent introduction to the subject and a foundational text for their notion of 'critical cyborg literacy.'"
--Urgent Futures

About the Author

Laura Forlano is Professor in the College of Arts, Media and Design at Northeastern University. She is a coeditor of three books: digitalSTS, and Bauhaus Futures and From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen (both MIT Press).

Danya Glabau is Industry Assistant Professor in the Department of Technology, Culture and Society at the Tandon School of Engineering at New York University. She is the author of Food Allergy Advocacy: Parenting and the Politics of Care.