THE ENLIGHTENMENT CYBORG: A HISTORY OF COMMUNICATIONS AND CONTROL IN THE HUMAN MACHINE, 1660–1830 This page intentionally left blank ALLISON MURI The Enlightenment Cyborg A History of Communications and Control in the Human Machine, 1660–1830 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2007 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada isbn 10: 0-8020-8850-3 isbn 13: 978-0-8020-8850-5 Printed on acid-free paper Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Muri, Allison, 1965– The Enlightenment cyborg : a history of communications and control in the human machine, 1660–1830 / Allison Muri. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 13: 978-0-8020-8850-5 (bound) isbn 10: 0-8020-8850-3 (bound) 1. Cyborgs – History – Textbooks. 2. Human-machine systems – History – Textbooks. I. Title. ta167.m86 2006 303.48'3 c2006-906162-9 University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP). for Patricia and Philip, Neaera and Marya, for Ray and for Club La Mettrie Imagination is the soul, since it plays all the roles of the soul ... It is imagination ... which adds the piquant charm of voluptuousness to the tenderness of an amorous heart; which makes tenderness bud in the study of the philosopher and of the dusty pedant, which, in a word, creates scholars as well as orators and poets. Foolishly decried by some, vainly praised by others, and misunderstood by all; it follows not only in the train of the graces and of the fine arts, it not only describes but can also measure nature. L’homme machine, 1747 This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments ix 1 Introduction 3 The Problem of ‘Modernity’ and Moralizing in Postmodern Cyborg Discourse 7 The Problem of Descartes, Dualism, and ‘Enlightenment’: Subjectivities in Cyborg Discourse 13 A New Schema for Cyborg Theory 17 The Problem of Definition 19 The Enlightenment Cyborg 24 2 Matter, Mechanism, and the Soul 32 Defining the Cyborg: Molecules, Electrons, and Spirit 41 Defining the Man-Machine I: Mechanicks and Matter 45 Defining the Man-Machine II: From Aether to Ethernet? 63 3 Some Contexts for Human Machines and the Body Politics: Early Modern/Postmodern Government and Feedback 86 Context 1: The Nervous System and Machines for Communicating 92 Context 2: Communications and Control in the Cyborg 95 Context 3: Communications and Control in the Man-Machine 102 Context 4: Clockwork versus Feedback in Human Machines 109 4 The Man-Machine: Communications, Circulations, and Commerce 117 Thomas Willis’s Nervous Government 118 viii Contents Communications and the Sovereignty of the Soul in The Anatomy of the Brain 120 The Extension of the Soul in Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes 131 Literary Communications: Materialism and the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit 141 The Man-Machine and Intellectual Electricity 158 5 The Woman-Machine: Techno-lust and Techno-reproduction 166 The Female Cyborg in Twentieth-century Fiction and Film, or, Why Do Cyborgs Need Boobs? 167 Cyborg Reproductive Technologies in the Twentieth Century 172 Female Cyborg Origin Stories 175 Where’s the Woman-Machine? 180 Female Vanity and Mechanick Art 183 Domestic Machines? 189 Sex Machines: The Mechanical Operation of the Slit 192 Reproductive Machines: Knowledge, ‘Geometrical Certainty,’ and the Automatic Womb 198 6 Cyborg Conceptions: Bodies, Texts, and the Future of Human Spirit 226 Virtually Human: The Electronic Page, the Archived Body, and Human Identity 228 Some Conceptual Frameworks: The Electronic Page and the Book of Life 231 The Electronic Page and Human Spirit 236 The Archived Body 238 Of Books and Spirit 245 Concluding Remarks 248 Notes 255 References 273 Illustration Credits 295 Index 297 Illustrations follow pages 150 and 182 Acknowledgments First, thanks to Raymond Stephanson and Larry Stewart for that remark- able graduate seminar so many years ago that set this course of research in motion. Many thanks to Robert Markley, Peter Stoicheff, Andrew Taylor and to Peter Walmsley for their encouraging and perceptive comments on various chapters. Thanks, too, to the two anonymous readers at University of Toronto Press whose constructive remarks re- sulted in a much improved manuscript. Thank you especially to Ray, who read these chapters many times over, and whose encouragement and support were unfailing. Thanks also to Richard A. Banvard, Paul Bidwell, Hilary Clark, Paul Coddington, Ron Cooley, Luba Frastacky and Anne Dondertman, Len Findlay, Gordon Fulton, Danielle Garnier, Stephen Greenberg, Peter J. Knapp, Terry Matheson, Siobhan McMenemy, Miles Muri, Taran Schindler, and Susan Walker. I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Arts Research Board of McMaster University for financial assistance. The English Department at McMaster University generously provided resources for the postdoctoral research that led to the completion of this manuscript.