The robots from takkun’s head: Cyborg adolescence in FLCL

Abstract

Modern humans have become cyborgs. Our transformation into a technologically oriented species is readily apparent; as we have shaped our world with our tools, the tools in turn have shaped our perceptions of the world. In her groundbreaking “Cyborg Manifesto," Donna Haraway states that “we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs."1 Philosopher Chris J. Cuomo concludes from Haraway’s ideas that “our dependence on and identification with machines is hardly less significant than the fact that we are flesh."2 We do not need to be physically fused to machinery in order to be cyborgs. Our ways of organizing and thinking about the world are already wedded to technological practice; a physical combination of man and machine would only be a phenotypic expression of our mental state. As we steer our identities through a mediated environment (keeping in mind Timothy Leary’s reminder that the term cybernetics derives from the Greek word for “pilot”3), we must come to terms with the fact that even in our daily interactions with the world of technology and machines, we are cyborgs.