Open AccessAt the End of Nature: Cyborgs, ‘Humachines’, and Environments in Postmodernity
Author(s) -
Timothy W. Luke
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
environment and planning. a
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1472-3409
pISSN - 0308-518X
DOI - 10.1068/a291367
Subject(s) - postmodernity , anthropocentrism , capitalism , hyperbole , sociology , deindustrialization , environmental ethics , antithesis , postmodernism , aesthetics , metaphor , epistemology , political science , economy , economics , philosophy , law , politics , linguistics
In this paper I rethink some of the premises in industrial-era social ontologies by rethinking how hybridized agencies, like cyborgs, actor networks, or humachines, decenter anthropocentric modernist conceptions of ‘man and the environment’. By using postmodernist claims that we now operate after ‘the end of Nature’ or ‘the death of Nature’, I build this paper from such conceptual hyperbole to explore how cyborg life-forms or humachinic social formations are reshaping the natural and social environments of contemporary fast capitalism on a global scale. These terms of analysis, in turn, could improve our understandings of the built and yet to be built environments in advanced technological economies and societies.