Page 176 - Cyberculture and New Media

Leman Giresunlu 167
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the virtual system to which he has always been heading.
The machines and the women mimic their humanity, but
they never simply become it. They may aspire to be the
same as man, but in every effort they become more
complex than he has ever been…. Woman cannot exist like
man; neither can the machine. As soon as her mimicry
earns equality, she is already something, and somewhere,
other than him. A computer that passes the Turing test is
always more than a human intelligence; simulation always
takes the mimic over the brink.

‘There is nothing like unto women’ writes Irigaray: ‘They go
beyond all simulation’ (Irigaray, 1991:39). Perhaps it was always the crack,
the slit, which marked her out, but what she has missed is not the identity of
the masculine. Her missing piece, what was never allowed to appear, was her
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own connection to the virtual, the repressed dynamic of matter.
Sadie Plant recognizes the female dynamics within the sciences as a
full display of complexity capable of taking over the brink of simulation.
Whereas Haraway’s obvious use of the concealment effect in making use of
her token divisiveness in separating the cyborg from the goddess does not
much prevent her from falling into the false consciousness of her own other:
the masculine’s binary world. Thus, Haraway’s strategic token disguise left
unexplained by her and overused unknowingly for long, risks permanence to
the detriment of any positive future gains in the name of complexity and
creativity. Therefore, Haraway’s time bound manifesto would stay ever as a
token and therefore clearly legitimized within the system.
Regardless the intent, Haraway’s historic preference of the cyborg to
the goddess contradicts in many respects with current socio-political and
economic developments of the 2000s. These times define a moment of
pragmatic, and effective paramount mergers, between all sorts of
technologically well-developed large-scale multinational companies,
therefore inviting the conceptual configurations of traditional nation-states
for adjustments to new social and cultural conditions. The cohabitation of
entirely different cultures, enforce more and more recognition for tolerance.
The inevitable coexistence of diverse belief systems regenerate the global
economic production for having it run at the right track; and therefore
generating a feedback system in all walks of economic and cultural
production for a more humane life style of quality in an increasingly
individualistic and competitive world. Therefore, each new era brings its own
complexities geared obviously to take the mimic over the brink of simulation.
That is, simulation furthers its intent in a transformative aspect of women and
nature that brings it to fruition.