Author Description

How can we interpret cyberspace? What is the place of the embodied human agent in the virtual world? The realm of electronic mediation offers rich material for fiction and fantasy, but equally poses fundamental issues for understanding contemporary social and cultural change. This innovative collection examines the emerging arena of cyberspace and the challenges it presents for the social and cultural forms of the human body. It shows how changing relations between body and technology offer new arenas for cultural representation. At the same time, contributors examine the realities of virtual worlds. Among the topics examined are technological body modifications, replacements and prosthetics; bodies in cyberspace, virtual environments and cyborg culture; cultural representations of technological embodiment in visual and literary productions; and cyberpunk science fiction as a pre-figurative social and cultural theory. Drawing on the work of cultural analysts, feminists, sociologists and philosophers, the book is at the forefront of attempts to come to terms with the potentials and realities of cyberculture and its implications for the contemporary condition of human embodiment.