Page 204 has Zizek on virtual sex: "The true horror evinced by virtual sex is not simply the loss of real sex, but the disclosure that this real sex never existed in the first place, that sex always-already was virtual."
this real sex never existed in the first place, that sex always-already was virtual.
I approve of this statement.
What I find most appealing about sex is being able to pay attention to how what is happening with my body impacts what I'm thinking and feeling and what is already happening inside my head, which is where most of the real work of sex takes place, for me. And vice versa.
Virtual sex allows me--forces me--to drop the pretense that sex and sexual desire can't start inside my head and must emenate from the body, and forces me to drop the pretense that sex inside my head isn't or shouldn't be sexy, and forces me to drop the pretense that what is inside my head shouldn't or won't affect my body.
Whoa, I'm glad I kept reading these after the D&G clusterfucks. I absolutely adore the term "synthanatos," both conceptually and aesthetically (as a really awesome word). Dude.
Also very intrigued/amused with that "formula of atheism."
This actually sounds like a paper I might be able to navigate -- does it exist online anywhere?
Angela Carter, now? The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman --- well this essay is giving me interesting stuff to read in the future if nothing else.
Recommended. Also Blade Runner, especially now that the director's authoritative cut has come out.
Lyotard was suggesting sexual difference would be necessary for artificial intelligenceDid you mention this before? I am appalled that I missed it, because it's fascinating, and contrasts interestingly with Moravec's comment that uploaded posthumans would only put on gender for costume parties. Tell me more
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contrasts interestingly with Moravec's comment that uploaded posthumans would only put on gender for costume parties.This actually plays interestingly with Ian Banks' observation that if you have some cultural imbalance that is gender-based, and anyone in you culture can switch genders at will, everyone will become the gender that it is better to be, and your culture will either fix the imbalance or have no breeding pairs
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Either that or they'll have kids by a means other than conventional sexual reproduction. Certainly the Culture's Minds could straight-up _manufacture_ new citizens, with appealing quirks of personality and amusing resource-consuming obsessions to pursue, out of whole cloth if they had to. I suspect they'd feel dirty doing it, but they sometimes feel dirty when they stick their fingers into the development process of other, less-powerful cultures too... and yet. :)
This talk of Neuromancer and disability is reminding me of what Delany did with disability in Nova - specifically [possible minor spoilers ahead?] how Prince Red, with his cyborg arm and its superhuman strength and speed (taken to outright comic-book-superhero levels at one point), still can't do the most important thing that anyone born with two meat-arms can do: plug himself into a computer interface.
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I approve of this statement.
What I find most appealing about sex is being able to pay attention to how what is happening with my body impacts what I'm thinking and feeling and what is already happening inside my head, which is where most of the real work of sex takes place, for me. And vice versa.
Virtual sex allows me--forces me--to drop the pretense that sex and sexual desire can't start inside my head and must emenate from the body, and forces me to drop the pretense that sex inside my head isn't or shouldn't be sexy, and forces me to drop the pretense that what is inside my head shouldn't or won't affect my body.
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Also very intrigued/amused with that "formula of atheism."
This actually sounds like a paper I might be able to navigate -- does it exist online anywhere?
Reply
Recommended. Also Blade Runner, especially now that the director's authoritative cut has come out.
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