In the first chapter of How We Became Posthuman Katherine Hayles discusses the ideas behind what it means to be posthuman. First, the privileging of the information pattern over the body and the physical is important to the idea of the posthuman being. Like Haraway, Hayles wishes to destroy this type of hierarchy; she does not believe mind can exist without body. Mind and body are not clearly defined and specifically not defined by any ideal form. She suggests that in the posthuman there are no distinct boundaries between “bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism” (3). In this sense she is denying the idea of the true-self and the ideal true form. Hayles specifically addresses the creation of this imaginary state/ideal when she elaborates on humans in a “state of nature.” She notes that as “Macpherson points out, however, this imagined ‘state of nature’ is a retrospective creation of a market society” (3). In other words, the human existence in a “state of nature” only exists and becomes clear after the transition into a market economy. This circular reasoning, Hayles claims, is reconciled by the posthuman, which denies the true self. Hayles makes clear, however, that while the posthuman does not sanction a true self, this does not suggest that the posthuman is not free.
