Study On Body View Of Katherine Hayles’s Post-humanism Theory

With the development of science and technology,the trend of post-humanism has gradually formed a strong influence on the theory and practice of contemporary literature.Katherine Hayles,an American postmodern literary critic with an interdisciplinary background,studies on post-humanism occupy a pivotal position in this trend of thought.Hayles questioned the current tendency of dissociation in post-humanist research and believed that the body should be the basis of human existence.Hayles’s research on the body is based on the philosophy of post-humanism.This article interprets the research of the body from the perspective of Hayles’s post-humanism in three parts.The first chapter elaborates the theoretical basis of Hayles’s post-humanist vision.Firstly,by combing the subject transformation from the Enlightenment to the information age and the development of the body view in western philosophy,the paper traces the origin of the problem of separation from the body in the current post-humanism.Second,focus on Hayles’s interdisciplinary research background,chaos theory,information theory and cybernetics,etc.The basic meaning of scientific theory,pointed out that after Hayles’s humanism study absorbed her early research on chaos theory,Hayles historic combed the cybernetics’s political and cultural background,and a lot of use of the information theory,especially the method of cybernetics.Finally,Hayles thought represented by Derrida’s deconstruction is still limited in the present/random in the cognitive style of deconstruction is present,on this basis,In order to emphase the importance of the physical body,Hayles introduced the concept of pattern/random in information theory into the subsequent discourse of humanism,pointing out the cognitive transformation from presence/absence to pattern/random.The second chapter mainly focuses on the foundation of Hayles’s post-humanism philosophy and systematically discusses her body research.First,follow the development history of cybernetics,Hayles describes the three changes course of the human body boundary,and integrated the presence/absence and pattern/random cognitive style,combing out the information about material and semiotic model,shows the main body of liberal humanism after the boundary is how to expand for virtual human body process.Secondly,Hayles made a significant distinction between the concept of formality and body,and introduced the concept of epitaph and mergence,which interact with each other.The analogical tension between body and formality,epitaph and mergence forms a field with deconstruction function.Finally,Hayles combining with specific texts,argues that new body practices will emerge in reading printed paper texts and digital media texts,and discusses the role of body in post-human cultural production.In the third chapter,with Hayles’s emphasis on the physical body,her research has made a great theoretical contribution to the literary criticism and post-humanism and launches a unique study of digital humanities and post-humanism.First of all,Hayles’s thinking on digital media gradually took shape into the study of digital humanities.As a pioneer of digital humanities,Hayles systematically explained the technical and theoretical development of digital humanities and believed that the research in this field would have a huge impact on the whole field of humanities.Secondly,in the aspect of post-humanist research,Hayles attacked the post-humanist research which inherited the liberal humanist tradition.This kind of post-humanist research is characterized by separateness,which builds up a vague sense of human connection by virtue of the fantasy of transcending the physical body and the perfect subject.In response,Hayles put forward her own post-humanist theory,arguing that the future of humanity will increasingly be entangled with intelligent machines,and that the body will continue to play an important role whether it is going to be virtual or hybrid.