ABSTRACT
This project examines how one of the impossibilities of library categorisation is the premise of fixing knowledge in place by naming and stabilizing ideas, then locating them in space. The lower level of Parks Library at Iowa State University houses ‘Architecture’ (NA1-9428), and we have observed how in this section of the library ‘Technology’ (NA2543.T43) and ‘Women’ (NA2543.W65) coexist alongside each other on a shelf. If we accept the premise that the library is a codification of knowledge then, there is a gap, physically and theoretically, between ‘Technology’ and ‘Women’. The space in-between has a name – cyborg – though not a call number to locate it. Cyborgs defy easy categorisation, they are hybrid creatures, composed of organism and machine. Simultaneously gendered and genderless, cyborgs have a legacy of destabilising the great Western evolutionary, technological, and biological narratives, and embody the ambiguities of ‘nature’ and ‘experience’.
