Overcoming life: Neuralink, cyborgs and the (an)aesthetics of cure

Emerging brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) such as Neuralink have profoundly contributed to the social/political imaginaries of western techno-scientific culture. Though currently focused on medical devices that would enable people with quadriplegia to mentally manipulate computer interfaces, ‘cure’ blindness and ‘solve’ autism and schizophrenia, Neuralink ultimately aims to ‘replace the cell phone’ with BCI as the dominant human–technology interface. Inspired by Eli Clare, this article argues that Neuralink’s emphasis on ‘solving’ bodymind troubles with invasive technology smuggles in a pernicious aesthetic of cure – a political aesthetic which treats disabled human bodies and, by extension, humanity itself as something to be transcended, fixed, normalized and overcome. In contrast, this article proposes a cyborg an aesthetics, a human–technology framework that does not follow logics of bodily transcendence or overcoming. Riffing on Cressida Heyes’s definition of ‘anaesthetics’ as liminal practices that resist neo-liberalism’s emphasis on productivity and progress, and through the artistic practices of Mallory Kay Nelson and Marco Donnarumma, this article explores the anaesthetics of cure evident in cyborg transgressions, i.e. cyborg and cripborg artistic practices that do not strive towards bodily liberation, overcoming or transcendence, but instead take the body as constitutive for human being and as a locus of exploration, experimentation, cooperation and resistance.