MDDM23: Erotick Machinery

[Dave Monroe]

   "Vaucanson's vainglorious Intent had been to repeat
for Sex and Reproduction, the Miracles he'd already
achiev'd for Digestion and Excretion.  'Who knows?
that final superaddition of erotick Machinery may have
somehow nudg'd the Duck across some Threshold of
self-Intricacy, setting off this Explosion of Change,
from Inertia toward Independence, and Power.  Isn't it
like an old Tale?  Has an Automatick Duck, like the
Sleeping Beauty, been brought to life by the kiss
of...l'Amour?"  (M&D, Ch. 37, p. 373)

>From Claudia Springer, Electronic Eros: Bodies and
Desire in the Postindustrial Age (Austin: U of Texas
P, 1996), Ch. 3, "Virtual Sex," pp. 80-94 ...

   "An article by Michael Heim .... exemplifies the
desire for a rule-bound, regulated virtual reality
system, one that implicitly evokes a patriarchal
order.  The article, titled 'The Erotic Ontology of
Cyberspace,' begins by asserting that cyberspace ...
is a "metaphysical laboratory, a tool for examining
our evry sense of reality" ({Heim, p.] 59).  The
reality constructed by our electronic culture, argues
Heim, combines the Platonic sense of eros with the
emtaphysics of Leibniz.  Plato's theory of the erotic
drive explains why computers are invested with an
erotic allure in our culture.  Eros, according to
Plato, operates on a continuum that leads from
physical attraction all the way to purely cerebral
pursuits, so that the desire for abstract knowledge is
an extension of the desire for sexual gratification. 
Both desires are motivated by a drive to extend our
existence beyond the life of our physical bodies by
giving birth, either to children or to ideas, both of
which can acrry on after we have died.  Computers,
according to Heim, have provided the hardware to push
to its extreme the Platonic concept of the disembodied
erotic drive, making it possible for humans to abadon
their 'meat' bodies and exist in a higher realm of
abstract ideas." (p. 85)

See ...

Heim, Michael.  "The Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace."
   Cyberspace: First Steps.  Ed. Michael Benedikt.
   Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.  59-80.

But note also ...

"... this Explosion of Change, from Inertia toward
Independence, and Power ..."

A libidinal theory of both personal and political
independence?  Give me liberty AND give me sex?  To be
continued, albeit under "'Morphosis" ...

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