Mapping Posthuman Body through Cyborg beings: Focus on Contemporary Korean Performance Art

Abstract

Mapping Posthuman body through Cyborg beings is a research project that examines the meaning of the posthuman through monster- like figures and cyborg beings, often used as symbolic representations of a cyborg in Korean performance art. The project manifests a critical view of transhumanism, which adheres to the same dichotomous division emphasized by humanism, and examines the posthuman being as “materially embodied, embedded in the environment, and intertwined with the world” as well as the ‘worlding-with’ method as a mode of posthuman existence. In particular, she turns to Donna Haraway's concept of the cyborg as the theoretical framework to explore how cyborg politics, which transcends the traditional, dichotomous thinking of the West and breaks down its boundaries, has developed within the trajectory of Korean art history. Research focuses on the bodies that get reconstructed at every moment within relationships by the act of blurring boundaries and suggests that we contemplate the meaning of our interactions with others and the sense of solidarity within the context of post- humanism in the post-COVID-19 era.