Cyborg Politics and Economic Realities: Reflections on Elaine Graham's Representations of the Post/Human

Abstract

This article seeks to examine the political and economic context of cyborg culture and technology in Elaine Graham's Representations of the Post/ Human. It begins by drawing out the relationship between Graham's study and Foucault's genealogical method and seeks to establish the 'silent machine' operating in Graham's analysis. By following three critical strands-know ledge as technology, economic determinism and imaginative agency and the economics of transcendence—the article highlights and extends a crit ique of capitalism and technology in the text. It argues that economics is now shaped by the machine and concludes by opening up a 'politics of refusal'. Graham's work is acknowledged for bringing to light uncomfor table questions surrounding the politics of the machine.