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Cyberpsychology pp 169–183Cite as

The Child and the Cyborg

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Abstract

This chapter explores parallels in culture, meanings and figurative possibilities between representations of childhood and cyborgs. Both children and cyborgs function at the margins of the material and the metaphorical, of the actual and the possible. As such they mark key borders around contemporary forms of subjectivity. The crucial question is whether they afford transgression or rather simply reinforce the borders that their spectral presences inscribe. Thus while children and cyborgs have each been mobilized to warrant interventions and to inspire (or even personify) visions of the future, they both also form key cultural repositories for the repressed fears and fantasies to which modern subjectivity gives rise.

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Authors
  1. Erica Burman
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology IV at the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain

    Ángel J. Gordo-López (Assistant Lecturer, member of the Discourse Unit) (Assistant Lecturer, member of the Discourse Unit)

  2. Discourse Unit, Bolton Institute, UK

    Ian Parker (Professor of Psychology, directs the MSc Critical Psychology programme and is managing editor of the Annual Review of Critical Psychology) (Professor of Psychology, directs the MSc Critical Psychology programme and is managing editor of the Annual Review of Critical Psychology)

Copyright information

© 1999 Erica Burman

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Burman, E. (1999). The Child and the Cyborg. In: Gordo-López, Á.J., Parker, I. (eds) Cyberpsychology. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27667-7_10

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