Making the Strange Familiar and the Familiar Strange...
“There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known
to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is
the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition,
and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge.
This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone." -- Rod Serling (1959)
According to Shklovsky (1916) art/popular culture functions
as a means of making the strange familiar and the familiar strange; man’s
perceptions of things and events that have become automatized, routinized and
mundane over time should be overhauled and changed through his exposure to such
experiences. Similarly, Badmington contended
that as society moves toward posthumanism
its members should attempt to deconstruct and restructure its knowledge base to
facilitate its understanding of its posthumanist
condition. “The
task of posthumanism” he says “is to uncover those uncanny moments at which
things start to drift, of reading humanism in
a certain way, against self and “post-,” (19). Alluding to Derrida and Lyotard,
Badmington suggested that simply because society dubs a particular period as post (i.e., posthumanism, postmodernity,
etc.) or coming after “does not (and, moreover, cannot) mark or make an
absolute break from the legacy of humanism…it cannot simply forget the past”
(21 – 22). Hayles (2003) too tells her
reader that “we carry [the past] around with us in the sedimented and
enculturated instantiations of our pasts we call our bodies” (137). While both authors suggested that the past
informs the future and that the future cannot exist without the past, it is not
as simplistic as the cliché those who do
not learn from their history are doomed to repeat it. Instead they remind readers of the relationship
that exists between consciousness and embodiment (i.e., the way form or embodiment
affects perceptions with regard to one’s state of being). Alluding to Thacker, Hayles brings new life
to her analogy of the body as the original prosthesis when she suggested that although
Thacker is approaching the appropriation of informational patterns from a biological
perspective these differing theories lead to similar conclusions: “information is seen as the handle through
which the materiality of the organism can be manipulated and transformed. “Change the code,”… “and you change the body.”
(136). Badmington
reached a similar conclusion when he suggested that changes in the code occur through deconstruction of the original idea.
He stated “it is nonetheless possible
to “lodg[e] oneself within traditional conceptuality in order to destroy it”
(Derrida 1978, “Violence,” 111), to reveal the internal instabilities, the fatal
contradictions, that expose how humanism is forever rewriting itself as
posthumanism.” (Badmington 16). It seems
as though Badmington is saying that it is not our social or intellectual condition
that actually changes, but the medium through which it exists and ultimately our
perceptions of it. He suggests the use
of reflective deconstruction as well as an adaptation of the original
(humanist) discourse to facilitate our understanding of current and future
social conditions we may endure.
Conscientization
and Praxis are transformative
educative concepts which encourage students to think in a way that examines
their role or existence in society in relation to others and the world around
them. Through conscientization, people are able to understand the world in
relation to the power dynamics which exists, developing perceptions of
themselves and others in relation to privilege and oppression. Praxis not
only indicates reflective thought, but also reflective thought that leads to
new action; from engaging in this type of reflective thought groups and
individuals should be inspired to affect social changes in the hegemonic world
around them because they are now aware of the injustices that have been
purported by living as they have been conditioned thus far. For example, in his
Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), Paulo
Freire explains that pedagogical practices that are dialogic, and foster conscientization
as well as (emancipatory) praxis among students is beneficial because these
practices can transform the way students think about themselves in relation to
the world in which they live. According
to Kafka (1927)
the contemporary learner is more
likely than his predecessors to experience moments of strangeness, moments when
recipes he has inherited for the solution of typical problems no longer seem to
work. It is at moments like these that
he will be moved to pore over maps, to disclose or generate structures of
knowledge which may provide him unifying perspectives and thus enable him to
restore order once again. His
learning…is a mode of orientation—or reorientation in a place suddenly become
unfamiliar. And “place” is metaphor in
this context, for a domain of consciousness, intending, forever thrusting
onward, “open to the world” (p. 160 -161).
Besides having text thumbs, carpal tunnel cramps, and being obviously dependent on technology for the
daily functioning of my life, it is apparent that I now have to make a conscious
decision to unplug myself as well. I did
not always have a cell phone or a laptop…so why is this so difficult? Reading, conversations, studying, even waking
up in the morning has changed for me as a member of this cyborg culture. The way I perceive the world is essentially
prejudiced by how I am informed by technology. It
is getting to the point that technology is influencing the way we think, and
process information (i.e., students now being able to digest material in sound
bites or snippets). My intellectual prosthesis is removing biological limbs and replacing
them with robot arms with the advent of new informational patterns. 
