Cyborgs and Nomads:
A Vision of Identity for the Information Age
by
Brian Babcock
Honors Essay in Humanities
May 15,1998
Stanford, California
• PREFACE: Note on Methodology •
This paper focuses primarily on the question of identity, so I had best begin by explaining what I take identity to mean. I understand identity to refer to people’s sense of who they are and how they fit into the world. Identity can be both individual and collective, and I am concerned both with the self-conception of individuals and with the political identity that makes a social movement something more than a haphazard collection of people. A person’s understanding of his or her identity is profoundly shaped, though not absolutely determined, by the society in which that person lives. Indeed, one of the principal functions of society is to help its members build identities by ordering their life experiences into coherent understandings of the nature of the world and their places in it. The exact nature of the relationship between the individual and society in the construction of identity is difficult to specify, and in fact investigating that relationship will be one of the themes of this paper.
A major part of my argument is an analysis of social trends that I claim have had a great impact on the way in which identity is developed at the end of the twentieth century. For the most part, my analysis of these trends has focused on identity as it is formed in advanced, industrialized, Western societies, although I do not make this focus explicit throughout the paper, nor do I hold myself to it entirely. One thing that my argument suggests is that interrelations among the world’s societies are in the process of becoming more and more pronounced, so the trends that affect one society are likely to make themselves felt in others, albeit in different guises specific to the history and culture of each individual society. At various points throughout my paper, I find it appropriate to make specific mention of the ways in which particular social transformations have a differential impact on various of the world’s many societies. While the conclusions I reach are most defensible within the context of advanced capitalist democracies, I feel that most of the analysis I present in this paper is applicable at least in part to other societies throughout the world.
I believe that the social restructuring involved in entering the Information Age produces unique stresses on society that differ from those of other points in history. The social phenomena which I discuss in this paper are similar in many ways, however, to phenomena that have occurred at different historical moments. I do not claim that all the qualities that I attribute to contemporary societies poised on the brink of a new millennium are specific to this particular historical era; I only suggest that the rise of information technologies, the globalization of the world economy, the emergence of an flexible networked organizational model, and other such factors have exacerbated tendencies that are undoubtedly found in all forms of social organization at all times. Whether the reader, after reading the analysis I will present, believes that I describe social features that are unique to the contemporary world or that I instead capture trends relevant to many different societies is not important. My focus is on the present; I will consider this essay to have been successful if the conclusions that I draw prove applicable to today’s world.
• TABLE OF CONTENTS •
Preface: Note on Methodologyi
Introduction1
Chapter 1: Informational Society4
Chapter 2: Reconstructed Identities24
Chapter 3: Deleuze and Difference48
Conclusion: Cyborgs and Nomads58
Works Cited72
1
• INTRODUCTION •
This paper sprung into existence at the point of conjunction of several flows; it is the offspring of multiple lines of thought that had their origins in very different soils. One of the problems that spurred the ruminations that culminated in this essay arose from deep within the academy out of a frustration with philosophy and theory that seemed unable to count beyond one, or at most two. Another problem relates to the amazing, unprecedented emergence in the last few decades of a force that in the middle of 1998 is pushing the stock market to record highs and has made Silicon Valley, California one of the hot spots of world events. A third concerns the difficulty of comprehending how, at a university situated at the center of both my first question and my second question, the possible relations between the two could be so little discussed and so poorly understood.
On a campus containing people of an incredible variety of shades of skin, tones of voice, and ways of living, people who come from all walks of life, the knowledge produced in the classrooms still has difficulty moving beyond the binary code of zero and one, black and white. As Donna Haraway writes:
“Certain dualisms have been persistent in Western traditions; they have all been systemic to the logics and practices of domination of women, people of colour, nature, workers, animals — in short, domination of all constituted as others, whose task is to mirror the self. Chief among these troubling dualisms are self/other, mind/body, culture/nature, male/female, civilized/primitive, reality/appearance, whole/part, agent/resource, maker/made, active/passive, right/wrong, truth/illusion, total/partial, God/man.”[1]
One motivation behind this paper was to examine the conditions of possibility of a theory that managed to “escape the abstract opposition between the multiple and the one, to escape dialectics, to succeed in conceiving the multiple in the pure state, to cease treating it as a numerical fragment of a lost Unity or Totality or as the organic element of Unity or Totality yet to come, and instead distinguish between different types of multiplicity.”[2] The theory promulgated at the University has difficulty dealing with difference; it is not adequate to capture the diversity of the university itself, let along to properly describe the world. Some steps have been taken in some parts of the university towards a better theoretical understanding of difference that would move beyond a binary code, but it seems to me that they have tended to pay less attention than they should to the other types of binary coding that is proceeding with great enthusiasm elsewhere in the university—this time on silicon chips.
The computer on which I am typing this paper is connected to a network for communication and information exchange that extends all over the world. Using the machine that sits before me, I can exchange information with computers located at the four comers of the earth. The global computer network in which I participate, mediated through the computer I am using, did not exist ten years ago. The implications of that fact for our understanding of society, it seems to me, are staggering. The technological changes of the past twenty years are in the process of radically reshaping nearly all aspects of life, from work to friendship to entertainment to politics. We have only just begun to understand the impact of information technologies on the world and on the human beings, and in my mind few forces could possibly have a greater impact than these technological changes on the form of social experience in years to come.
This paper is my attempt to juxtapose an examination of the social transformations brought about by the transition from an industrial society to an informational society with an analysis and critique of the philosophical codes that have become internalized in cultural practices. My hope is that this combination of approaches may contribute something to our understanding of the conditions of the modem world in which we live. My argument will proceed by first detailing what I consider to be the most salient elements of the social changes inherent in the move to a world of global enterprises and information networks, then discussing the social movements that have risen in reaction to these changes. I will proceed to criticize the pattern of organization that I see as typifying such social movements as following a dualistic logic that is both practically and theoretically inadequate. After analyzing the contributions that the innovative philosophy of Gilles Deleuze can make to broadening our understanding of identity and the forces that produce it, I will conclude by piecing together from the theoretical shards and fragments I unearth throughout the course of my investigation some recommendations for how we can productively understand Information-Age identity.
1
• CHAPTER 1: Informational Society •
In order to function smoothly, societies depend on a wide variety of social institutions to interact with one another to produce a social fabric that cushions individuals in their procession through the routines and crises of daily life. The familiarity of these institutions gives the members of society a sense of security as they go about their business. This familiarity contributes to building a comprehensible order within which the members of society can give their lives coherence and stability. In times of social change, however, the harmonious world supported by the interaction of social institutions often has trouble adapting to newly emerging social realities. The result is frequently a disruption of the correspondence between social understanding and life experiences. Such a disruption can be frightening and uncomfortable; it rocks the foundations upon which people construct their identities, their understandings of who they are and how they fit into the larger world. In this first chapter, I will discuss how many of the most important institutions that modem individuals use to constitute their identities are undergoing great stress as a result of the emergence of historically unprecedented forms of social organization.
* * * * * * *
Work is one of the most important aspects of most people’s lives. Most people spend a significant portion of their waking hours engaged in productive work of one form or another, and at least a certain minimum of economic success is generally a prerequisite for a stable, satisfying life free from material privation. Many would go further: the idea that participation in the production of material goods is at the core of what it means to be a human being has been enormously influential in the Western intellectual tradition, most prominently in Marxist thought.
Over the last twenty years, the systems of production of most countries in the world have undergone tremendous transformations. A number of factors including the development of improved telecommunications technologies and a global reduction in barriers to international trade have led to economic globalisation in an unprecedented form. The most powerful and productive sectors of the world’s economies are increasingly becoming integrated into a global economic network, a network with its own logic and power dynamics that reach beyond national boundaries.
Rapid technological advances, particularly in the telecommunications and information-processing sectors, have created an economy in which competition is fierce, change is incredibly rapid, and success is dependent on the ability to quickly and accurately process large amounts of information and respond appropriately. Firms have adapted to the new conditions of survival under advanced capitalism by modifying their organizational structure to place a premium on flexibility, innovation, information processing skills, and technical capability. The rigid bureaucracy that often characterized organizational culture during the first half of the twentieth century under the influence of “Taylorism” and nascent “scientific management” is in the process of being displaced by a new business culture that emphasizes flexibility and adaptability in order to manage the uncertainty produced by rapidly changing technology and market conditions. Decentralized decision-making and increased autonomy for worker teams are two features of an increasingly influential style of management that originated in Japanese firms.[3]
Other characteristics of Japanese management that have allowed the Japanese economy to grow at an incredible rate over the last fifty years also emphasize flexibility. The “just-in-time” (kan-ban) supply system is designed to eliminate the necessity for keeping large inventory by using a network of local suppliers and distributors to produce the exact quantities of goods that are required at the exact time they are required. Many Japanese conglomerates are organized as keiretsu, networks of small enterprises performing manufacturing, distribution, and marketing functions under the direction of an umbrella parent organization.[4] American and European firms have sought to emulate the benefits of these decentralized structures by streamlining organizations, “outsourcing” many areas of business that don’t represent core competencies of the firm, and relying heavily on outside consultants and temporary contract labor.
The economic transformations involved in the emergence of the informational economy have had several destabilizing effects on the way in which people see themselves in their roles as workers. For one thing, businesses seek to trim their ranks of full-time employees, who require a significant investment in training, demand high salary and benefits, and are difficult to add and remove quickly to adapt to changing demand and changing market conditions. In place of regular, full-time workers who spend the majority of their working lives in a single line of business, often in a single company, we are witnessing rapid growth in part-time, flex-time, and temporary employment coupled with massive layoffs of full-time workers due to corporate “downsizing.” Unlike their parents, today’s college graduates do not expect to spend most of their working lives with one company. Job security is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. In today’s economy, the only way to guarantee continued employment and career success is to possess a wide range of skills, technical savvy, and the ability to market oneself.
The incorporation of women in the workforce in growing numbers has contributed to changing the nature of employment. The prototypical middle-class American family, with a male husband as sole breadwinner and head of household and a homemaking wife who stays home with the children, is not nearly as prevalent as it used to be. A variety of factors, including practical economic motivations, have made two-income households the norm rather than the exception, even among the families that hold to the traditional two-parents-with-children structure—which represent a shrinking demographic slice. Women are much more likely than men to perform part-time or flex-time work, and their influx into the workforce coincides nicely with the growing preference among employers to hire temporary and part-time workers. In Japan, where lifetime employment with a single company is still much more of a reality than it is in most Western nations—for men, at least—a large (disproportionately female) short-term labor force plays an important role in preserving job security among the (largely male) lifetime employees. As women demand greater equality with men in employment, however, this structural insulation for male breadwinners will dissipate.
Another noteworthy trend that has destabilized people’s expectations about work is the emergence of the multinational corporation as a widespread and powerful form of business organization. The ideology of free-market capitalism has drawn new adherents, buoyed by the failure of the state-controlled command economies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The global free-trade mentality contributed to the 1994 ratification of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the formation of the World Trade Organization—as well as the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—which contributed to the spread of multinational corporations by relaxing import and export restrictions. An international division of labor and production has become much more feasible than ever before due to advances in transportation and communications technology. The internationalization of labor allows companies to move operations overseas to developing countries, where labor and production costs are lower than in developed countries.
The new international division of labor is characterized by the concentration of unskilled and semi-skilled labor in factories in developing countries and information-intensive, high value-added work performed by highly-skilled, technically-trained workers in developed countries possessing cutting-edge technology and a well-developed telecommunications infrastructure. Combined with the elimination of many semi-skilled manufacturing jobs due to automation, this division of labor has several disturbing consequences. For one, it leads to increased polarization between the rich and the poor, as the technical élite sees their skills become more and more central to production in the informational economy and unskilled workers face an employment future that grows ever bleaker. The gap between those whom the informational economy brings online and those whom it passes over is widening.[5]
The impact of this polarization is felt differently in developed countries and in developing countries. In developed countries, the technical élite does very well, but less- educated employees in manufacturing and semi-skilled service jobs are under a great deal of pressure. Job security in developed countries is undermined by the very real possibility that factories will close without warning, with operations relocated overseas. Those workers who are able to keep their jobs frequently must make concessions. The full-time, well-paid, secure jobs negotiated by labor unions at the height of their power in the middle of the twentieth century are rapidly becoming a thing of the past.