포스트휴먼 페미니즘과 정보이론 - N. 캐서린 헤일스의 사이버네틱스 연구를 중심으로

Abstract

This study aims to contribute to the field of posthuman feminism by analyzing N. Katherine Hayles' cybernetic information theory from a gendered perspective. Hayles, a theorist who has received relatively little attention in feminism, deserves to be reevaluated for her emphasis on the embodiment of information and her critique of male chauvinist ideas that promote disembodiment. Assessing the gendered significance of Hayles's information theory can broaden and enhance posthuman feminist theorizing in the life sciences and computational technoscience. This article examines how Hayles explores the processes of disembodiment and decontextualization of information in her study of the history of Cybernetics. Information theorists Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon, who were prominent in the first wave of Cybernetics, dematerialized and decontextualized information to quantify it as an object. This approach was rooted in the Western Platonic and Cartesian dichotomy, which asserts the dominance of the mind over matter and perpetuates the liberal humanist notion of subjectivity based on race, gender, and class distinctions. The disembodied view of information in Cybernetics has served as the foundation for the sexist practices evident in the development and use of AI today. However, this study reveals that this disembodied conception of information was not inevitable but rather a historical accident. It highlights Hayles's posthuman perspective, which emphasizes the intermediacy and complexity of the dynamic relationship between information and matter, human and machine. This perspective aligns with materialist feminism and Posthuman feminism, including Karen Barad's Intra-actions.