A Cyborg Perspective : The Cochlear Implant and Actor-Networking Perception

Abstract

The paper focuses on the man-machine relationships between the cochlear implant and its wearers as a contemporary form of cyborgization. The research object will be Michael Chorost's biographical account of his implantation and adaption to the implant. In a theoretical section an effort is made to argue that Actor-Network Theory can function as a “cyborg perspective,” which allows for describing the symbiosis between the implant and Chorost as a practice of reciprocal “tuning” and the processual production of perception as a complex relationship between technical object, human body and environment. Based on Actor-Network theory's concept of “symmetry,” technical object, the biochemical activities of the human body and their relation to a presumed “outside” environment are equally involved and constituted. Finally, the chapter suggests that this specific relationship can be paralleled with the concept of mediality as it has been discussed in the German-speaking academic context.