ONLINE: Katherine Hayles and the Materiality of Meaning in Language 

This week we will more deeply examine Katherine Hayles’ philosophical engagement with language which begins from the recognition that language is never disembodied—it is always mediated through a material substrate, whether ink on paper, sound waves in air, or digital code on a screen. In her view, language cannot be separated from the technologies that carry it; each medium transforms not only how meaning is conveyed but what meaning itself can be. This insistence on embodiment opposes the Cartesian and structuralist traditions that treat language as an abstract system of signs detached from material reality.
Hayles’ work, particularly in How We Became Posthuman and Writing Machines, explores how digital technologies have redefined the conditions of textuality. Where print culture stabilized meaning through the fixity of the page, digital language introduces fluidity, interactivity, and algorithmic co-authorship. The written word thus becomes a dynamic process rather than a static representation, raising new philosophical questions about authorship, interpretation, and agency—questions that echo but also extend poststructuralist debates from Foucault and Derrida into the digital era.
At the deepest level, Hayles’ philosophy of language is an ontology of mediation: she sees language not merely as a tool for human expression but as a living interface between consciousness, code, and world. In digital environments, she argues, humans and intelligent systems co-constitute meaning through reciprocal flows of information. Language becomes the site where embodiment meets computation, where the symbolic and the material continuously reshape one another—a vision that collapses the old humanist distinction between “word” and “world” into a single, interdependent ecology of signification.
We hope you'll join Plato’s Cave and the Orlando Stoics for this thought-provoking discussion.
READING MATERIALS

Katherine Hayles - How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics
https://techgnosis.com/n-katherine-hayles-posthumanism/

An Interview with Katherine Hayles: Materiality Has Always Been in Play https://pubs.lib.uiowa.edu/ijcs/article/id/29667/download/pdf/

Katherine Hayles - Toward Embodied Virtuality j
https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/elliseng1710sp2018/2018/03/11/after-class-writing-n-katherine-hayles-toward-embodied-virtuality/

TIMEZONES
For our members in other states:
6:00 AM Pacific Time USA
7:00 AM Mountain Time USA
8:00 AM Central Time USA
9:00 AM Eastern Time USA
In other countries, please convert time using this free tool:
https://www.worldtimebuddy.com
The meeting starts at 9:00AM Eastern Time. After 15 minutes of chat, the presentation starts at 9:15AM sharp.
ZOOM INFO:
CLICK TO JOIN - https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83190269900?pwd=Jj1lbWLo3sdhWL830ba4NoF66liJvB.1

This group is a combined meeting of the Orlando Stoics and Plato’s Cave members. We enjoy open-minded, respectful conversations. If we differ in our opinions, then "we agree to disagree.” The long-term goal is to expand our minds via group discussions.

This meeting is free and open to the public.