Body Drift: Butler, Hayles, Haraway (Volume 22)

by Arthur Kroker

As exemplary representatives of a form of critical feminism, the writings of Judith Butler, Katherine Hayles, and Donna Haraway offer entry into the great crises of contemporary society, politics, and culture. Butler leads readers to rethink the boundaries of the human in a time of perpetual war. Hayles turns herself into a “writing machine” in order to find a dwelling place for the digital humanities within the austere landscape of the culture of the code. Haraway is the one contemporary thinker to have begun the necessary ethical project of creating a new language of potential reconciliation among previously warring species. According to Arthur Kroker, the postmodernism of Judith Butler, the posthumanism of Katherine Hayles, and the companionism of Donna Haraway are possible pathways to the posthuman future that is captured by the specter of body drift . Body drift refers to the fact that individuals no longer inhabit a body , in any meaningful sense of the term, but rather occupy a multiplicity of gendered, sexualized, laboring, disciplined, imagined, and technologically augmented. Body drift is constituted by the blast of information culture envisioned by artists, communicated by social networking, and signified by its signs. It is lived daily by remixing, resplicing, and redesigning the codes of gender, sexuality, class, ideology, and identity. The writings of Butler, Hayles, and Haraway, Kroker reveals, provide the critical vocabulary and political context for understanding the deep complexities of body drift and challenging the current emphasis on the material body.

Genres: Theory, Feminism

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book reads more like a manic hagiography than anything else. Besides being lazy, Kroker's refusal to provide any critical analysis or points of contention is kind of unbelievable--how many decades have passed since many of these texts were published? Have we actually accrued no hindsight? No contradictions have emerged, no historical divergences? Also, "the body drift" feels more like an awkward framing device than an actual proposal. Man, I wanted to like you so badly!

[Hong Liu · Rating 2 out of 5]

These first few chapters are driving me away from posthumanism. And way too much parallel sentences for critical literature... I cant even...

[Jacob · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've read Chapters 1+3, and skimmed the fourth chapter. Kroker doesn't really seem to add anything to the literature. This book seems more or less a poor overview of the three thinkers: Butler, Hayles, Haraway. He doesn't really discuss these thinker's thoughts, outside of comparing them to Nietzsche, Heidegger and Marx.

Not really worth the read.