A Cyborg Turn in Law?

Abstract

This Article deploys cybernetic theory to argue that a novel legal impact imaginary has emerged. In this imaginary, the subjects of legal interventions are performed and enacted as cybernetic organisms, that is, as entities that process information and adapt to changes in their environment. This Article, then, argues that in this imaginary, law finds its effectiveness - not by threatening, cajoling, educating, and moralizing humans as before, but by affecting the composition of cybernetic organisms, giving rise to new kinds of legal subjects that transcend the former conceptual boundary between humans and non-humans, or persons and things. The cybernetic interventions work to change the cyborgs' behavioral responses, thus giving law a new kind modality of power. This Article develops a model for understanding cyborg regulation through case studies and argues that cyborg regulation deploys three distinct strategies. Cyborgs can be controlled through affecting the informational inputs the entities receive, through agencement practices that intervene in the material constitution of the cyborg cognitions, and, finally, by psycho-morphing humans to make them useful components of the cyborg cognitive machineries. The Article ends with a discussion of the theoretical implications of the transition to the cyborg imaginary.