Cyborg History and the World War II Regime

Abstract

The Second World War was a watershed in history in many ways. I focus on the World War II discontinuity as it relates to the intersection of scientific and military enterprise. I am interested in how we should conceptualize that intersection and in offering a preliminary tracing of the “World War II regime” that has grown out of it—a regime that includes new forms of scientific and military practice but that has invaded and transformed many other cultural spaces, including—my primary example here—the industrial workplace. I exploit the figure of the cyborg to (1) thematize the social, material, and conceptual heterogeneity of the developments at issue; (2) specify a distinct range of cyborg objects and sciences that emerged from the World War II matrix; and (3) exemplify a historiographical approach that escapes the traditional master-narrative structures of science studies.