title: The Human Figure and Urban Ground: Cyborgs and the City.
abstract: Recent years have seen developments in cyborgian movements in which people play and experiment with the boundaries of human flesh and aesthetic realities. Some individuals develop novel intimate relationships with devices that, each in their own way, interfere with human subjectivity. Public dissemination of these movements often proposes notions of transcendence, therapy, post-humanism and trans-humanism, but often fails to outline the lived-experience of those who explore cyborgian identity as an alternative mode of being in the world. This paper briefly follows self-described cyborgs who delimit the body through sensory 'enhancement' in an effort to disrupt common relationships between the human figure and the urban ground. Borrowing from Lewis Mumford's concepts of biotechnics, I propose cyborgian engagement as a type of psychodynamic living. Rather than focus on post-human discourses, these cyborgs turn to the natural world for inspiration in shaping the terms of engagement between their bodies and the city.
authors.affiliation: a UCL , UK.
authors.forename: Aaron
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Parkhurst
mesh_terms: D002947:Cities; D018594:Human Body; D006808:Humanism; D006801:Humans; D012371:Robotics
keywords: anthropology; cyborg; enhancement; phenomenology; science and technology studies; uncertainty; urban studies