Beyond the Cyborg-Metaphor: Psychology in Times of Smart Systems

In postmodern theorizing, the cyborg metaphor stands for the displace- ment of boundaries between humans and the ‘nonorganic’ and ‘artifi- cial’ materiality. By advocating a symmetry of these matters, the cyborg is something more than a symbol. It is an attempt to taper the epistemic problem that also “the boundary between science fiction and social real- ity [would be] an optical illusion” (Haraway, 1985, p. 191). For Donna Haraway, the feminist luminary of postmodernism, the metaphor of the cyborg thus condenses (or “diffracts” as she later puts it) the instability in all current forms of life as “a struggle over life and death” (ibid.). Allusions to the ‘to-be-or-not-to-be’ question indicate the scope of intervention.While recognizing and keeping up this aim, this kind of critical thinking shall be put to a test. By simultaneously clarifying its theorems and methods, the underlying methodology is applied to today’s contra- dictions in the field of learning into which more and more technologies are inscribed. The feminist techno-scientific critique cannot be reduced to the work of Haraway, therefore more recent continuations by Karen Barad are also considered.