"The Tool as an Extension of the Body. The Technological Illusion"

GARCÍA, ESTEBAN ANDRÉS

Deception. Essays from the Outis Project on Deception / Society for Phenomenology and Media

Zeta Books

Lugar: Bucharest; Año: 2010; p. 91 - 103

NOTA: Se trata de una re-publicación en un libro publicado en 2010 del artículo previamente publicado en revista Outis, 2004. Por tal razón en el Full Text sólo se incluye la portada del libro, y el texto completo está adjunto en la sección de Artículos de SIGEVA.ABSTRACT: This chapter addresses some aspects of our relationship with technical tools. Beyond the opposition between nostalgic "apocalyptic" visions and naive "integrated" ones, I intend to show that technique lodges a double sense, two inseparable and contradictory sides. To speak of a technological "deception" may be an exaggeration, so I would rather speak of an "ambiguity": the technical instrument allows us to extend our own body and its possibilities at the price of simultaneously exposing us to a certain alienation. In the first place, then, I shall intend to show via three different ways in which sense tool and machine can be considered as extensions of our motor and perceptive capacities. These three complementary ways are the phenomenological way (M. Merleau-Ponty), the paleoanthropological way (A. Leroi-Gourhan) and the "organological" way (G. Canguilhem). Finally, I will review these analyses from an economic (Marxist) perspective which they seem to overlook, to bring to light the sense of alienation which is inherent to technique underneath the amazing possibilities it offers us.