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Call for Papers in the Topical Collection: "Cyborg-Technology Relations"

2025-02-02

Guest editors

Dr. Joshua Earle (University of Virginia)
Dr. Ashley Shew (Virginia Tech)

Description

This topical collection presents a philosophizing of cyborg-technology relations that takes account of disabled technology users. We’ve argued that “cyborg-technology relations” should go beyond epistemological limitations, universalizing implications, and traditional postphenomenological frames (Earle and Shew 2024). In our piece, we drew on agential realism (Barad, 2007) and care ethics (e.g. de la Bellacasa, 2017) to expand cyborg-technology relations in their ethico-onto-epistemological complexity and acknowledge that “[t]o be cyborg is to be forced to recognize the radical interdependence of your life, to take care as a matter of survival” (p.13). We seek papers that similarly expand the idea of cyborg-technology relations, especially those which come from lived experience and employ novel and creative philosophies and methodologies.

We invite the submission of papers focusing on but not restricted to the following questions:
● How do systems of maintenance, design, and infrastructure shape cyborg life?
● What are focal concerns and practices in your life as a cyborg?
● How should cyborg experience and expertise be represented in technological
conversations?
● What technologies and tools mediate your life as a disabled person, and what account
can you give of their use in your life?
● Do (and how do) the politics of technology enter into disabled life?
● What epistemological and ethical considerations come from being cyborg?
● How does technological embodiment manifest in the lives of cyborgs?
● How do media and philosophical accounts about technology contrast with your
experiences as a cyborg?
● How does aging factor into your experiences with technology?
● and case studies that analyze specific disability technology uses (or disability
technologies in concert with infrastructure or systems).

Note: We consider medication a technology, as well as more traditional “assistive” technologies for disability and any tools or implants required for comfortable disabled cyborg existence. Pacemakers, insulin pumps, and internal prostheses count as much as Ritalin, white canes, heating pads, and glasses.

Timetable

Deadline for paper submissions: June 1, 2025
Deadline for paper reviews: September 15, 2025
Deadline for submission of revised papers: October 15, 2025
Deadline for reviewing revised papers: December 1, 2025
Accepted papers will be published on a rolling basis as they are accepted.

Submission guidelines

During the submission, please indicate on the first page of the cover letter that your paper is for the topical collection “Cyborg-Technology Relations”. Please follow the author guidelines of JHTR. Research articles should not exceed 10,000 words. For any further information, please, contact: shew@vt.edu and jearle@virginia.edu.

References
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.
de La Bellacasa, M. P. (2017). Matters of care: Speculative ethics in more than human worlds(Vol. 41). U of Minnesota Press.
Earle, J. & Shew, A.(2024). Cyborg-technology relations.Journal of Human-Technology Relations, 2(1), pp.1-19.

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