Balsamo, "Forms of Technological Embodiment"

Four forms of postmodern embodiment:
1) laboring body
2) marked body
3) repressed body
4) disappearing body

• repressed typically a male-identified transcendental cultural narrative linked with typical VR programs that reduce sensory inputs to narrow channels, eliminate pain. points out that "reconstructed body does not guarantee reconstructed cultural identity" (247). (gendered patterns of communication still follow us in cyberspace, for example) this form
  


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  disappearing body - informating of bodies (human genome, info theory opened door for this?). "one that promises...the final erasure of gender and race as culturally organized systems of differentiation" (248). bio-engineered parts replace body parts, challenge and shift notions of natural bodies. Uses Life magazine example to point out that discourse around these technologies points to man as a fully embodied being while women are "container for a fetus" (as breast forms obvious exclusion from magazine spread...what about breast implants?)
  


• marked bodies are "where bodies become signs and signs become commodities." points to UI of tools for plastic surgery, where features can be rewritten to match ideal western gendered face with tools such as "erasers, pencils, and 'agenic cursors'" (245)
  


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  laboring bodies - asian women making microelectronics because of small nimble fingers. bodies give them a distinct place in system of production.
  

"masculinist attempts at body repression signal a desire to return to the 'neutrality' of the body, to be rid of the culturally marked body" (251). This makes perfect sense to me as body for white man in post modern seems to have been retold as a source of privilege, source of guilt. Transcending body is a return to "equality" if so simple as that. Anti-affirmitive action arguments also seem to be linked to this. Meritocracy? Informated merit so let us just isolate it to that. (The argument falters before the counterargument that for those benefitting from affirmitive action, embodiment has been one constant factor in cultural identity that can be discriminated against. [Valian argument])