Since the 1980s, popular media, literature and theory have suggested that technology has induced a newly evolved, posthuman and postmodern cyborg consciousness. This article examines the premise of human evolution towards a disembodied `post-human' state in cyberpunk literature and film, as well as some influential cyber-theory. Rather than indicating a revolutionary change in human consciousness, both cyber-lit and cybertheory incorporate and reinscribe Western Christian narratives about human identity. Images of disembodiment tend to reaffirm traditional religious concepts of human reproduction, individual consciousness, spirit and body, and life after death.
(First published in Im Netz der Systeme, Kunstforum International103[Sept./Oct. 1989]: 100-108.)
2.
Baudrillard, Jean
(1983) `The Ecstasy of Communication', pp. 126-134 in Hal Foster (ed.) The Anti- Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press.
3.
Baudrillard, Jean
(1983) Simulations, trans. Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman. New York: Semiotext(e).
4.
Baudrillard, Jean
(1988) The Ecstasy of Communication. New York: Semiotext(e).
5.
(First published in Astronautics, Sept. 1960.)
6.
Diogenes Laertius
(1979) Life of Pythagoras, trans. R.D. Hicks. London and Cambridge, MA: Loeb.
7.
Fahm, Lattee A.
(1980) The Waste of Nations: The Economic Utilization of Human Waste in Agriculture. Montclair, NJ: Allanheld, Osmun.
8.
Featherstone, Mike
, and Roger Burrows (eds) (1995) Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment. London: Sage.
9.
Frye, Northrop
(1957) Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Reprint, 1973, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.)
10.
Gibson, William
(1984) Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books.
11.
Gibson, William
(1988) Mona Lisa Overdrive. New York: Bantam Books.
12.
Gibson, William
(1995) Johnny Mnemonic: The Screenplay and the Story. New York: Ace Books.
13.
Hayles, N. Katherine
(1999) How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
14.
Haraway, Donna
(1991) `A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century', pp. 149-181 in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.
15.
Heim, Michael
(1993) The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
16.
Kroker, Arthur
and Marilouise Kroker (eds) (1987) Body Invaders: Panic Sex in America. New York: St Martin's Press.
17.
Kroker, Arthur
and Marilouise Kroker (1996) Hacking the Future: Stories for the Flesh-Eating 90s. New York: St Martin's Press.
18.
Kroker, Arthur
and Michael Weinstein (1994) Data Trash: The Theory of the Virtual Class. New York: St Martin's Press.
19.
Kroker, Arthur
and Michael Weinstein (1996) `Global Algorithm 1.4: The Theory of the Virtual Class', Ctheory: Theory, Technology and Culture19: 1-2.
20.
Kroker, Arthur
, Marilouise Kroker and David Cook (1989) Panic Encyclopedia. Montréal: New World Perspectives.
21.
McLuhan, Marshall
(1962) The Gutenberg Galaxies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. (Reprint, 1997, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.)
22.
McLuhan, Marshall
(1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. (Reprint, 1994, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.)
23.
McLuhan, Marshall
(1976) `The Violence of the Media', Canadian Forum56(September): 9-12.
24.
Orlan Conference Extract 3, http://www.cicv.fr/creation_artistique/online/orlan/conference/extract3.html, trans. Tanya Augsburg and Michel A. Moos.
25.
Stelarc
(1999) `Parasite Visions: Alternate, Intimate and Involuntary Experiences', Body & Society5(2-3): 117-127.
26.
Stephanson, Raymond
(forthcoming) The Yard of Wit: Male Creativity and Sexuality, 1650-1750. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
27.
Stephenson, Neal
(1992) Snow Crash. New York: Bantam.
28.
Sterling, Bruce
(1996) Schismatrix Plus. New York: Ace Books. (First published 1985.)
29.
Stone, Allucquére Rosanne
(1994a) `Split Subjects, Not Atoms; or, How I Fell in Love with My Pros-thesis', Configurations2(1): 173-190.
30.
Stone, Allucquére Rosanne
(1994b) `Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?: Boundary Stories about Virtual Cultures', pp. 81-118 in Michael Benedikt (ed.) Cyberspace: First Steps. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
31.
Thurtle, Phillip
and Robert Mitchell (eds) (2002) Semiotic Flesh: Information and the Human Body. Seattle: Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities.
32.
United Nations Population Division
(2000) World Population Prospects: The 2000 Revision. New York: United Nations.
33.
Wachowski, Larry
and Wachowski, Andy (1998) `The Matrix Shooting Script', in Spencer Lamm (ed.) (2000) The Art of the Matrix. New York: Newmarket Press.
34.
(First published in Gottfried Hattinger and Peter Weibel [eds] [1990] Ars Electronica 90, Band 2: Virtuelle Welten/Virtual Worlds. Linz: Veritas Verlag, pp. 9-38.)
35.
World Resources Institute
, United Nations Environment Programme, United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank (1996) World Resources 1996-97. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
