Feature Article
Rethinking ‘Queer Kin Groups’: Cyborgs, Animals, and Machines
Abstract: Wired, hybridized, networked, biotic and abiotic, organic and inorganic, continuous with both the animal and the machine, the human, in Donna Haraway’s well-known 1980s phrasing, has become “cyborg”. The messy interconnected nature-culture embeddedness of the posthuman – techno, human, animal – would seem to forestall the idea of an autonomous human that can be defined as unique against the backdrop of the entire non-human world. If liberal humanism has upheld the human as unique, which has, in turn, encouraged the domination and exploitation of this planet, accepting our lack of uniqueness, posthumanists suggest, may turn out to be the best way to sustain life. Yet do “multiple belongings”, “queer kin groups” and the posthuman better address the ecological crisis we are in than the human rights debates that privilege the human? Or does Haraway’s queer kin group of “lapdogs and laptops in the same commodious lap” glide over the incommensurability between animals and machines and re-centre the human lap? If ecological systems and the long-range survival of life on the planet are the concern, the resurrection of the Cartesian collapse of animals with machines needs to be challenged. This paper explores the roots of the animal- machine analogy, the rise of the robot rights debates, the material and carbon footprint of ‘smart’ technologies, and the fictions that have inspired the artificial intelligence and robotics industry that market the animal as machine.
Teresa Heffernan. 2023. “Rethinking ‘Queer Kin Groups’: Cyborgs, Animals, and Machines.” In Symbiotic Posthumanist Ecologies in Western Literature, Philosophy and Art: Towards Theory and Practice. Edited by Peggy Karpouzou and Nikoleta Zampaki. Berlin: Peter Lang. Open Access. https://www.peterlang.com/document/1288773.
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