Cyborg Anthropology

：The Metaphor of Cybernetic Organism and Intellectual Knowledge Production in the Information Age

Abstract

　Through analysis of the notion of cyborg，this article attempts to produce a new anthropological approach that is related to but different from the pragmatic studies of internet anthropology. The new approach is focused on a paradigm shift involving the reconstruction of human subjectivity in the information society,“Cyborg”，or“cybernetic organism”，was first proposed as a technical concept for astronauts’problem of survival in the space，but was later appropriated to become an ontological metaphor. In principle，cyborg blurs the line of demarcation between human being and machine and provokes reflections on human subjectivity. It stems from cybernetics which conceives of human beings as the receiving and processing terminals of information or information network nodes. Cyborg presents itself as a set of open links and connected networks brought about by human-material assembly and splicing. The metaphoric effect of cyborg is related to the paradigm shift in intellectual knowledge production. This paper raises the topic of global cyborg anthropology in the Chinese context，and tries to describe the ontological thinking and epistemological exploration of human-machine subjectivity in the paradigm of contemporary cyborg anthropology. Hopefully，a new paradigm is created for ethnographic study in the information age.