Eliza and Barry

me too. impressed. amazing connections between theory fiction history and narrative structures, a crazyly associative read and have by now given up to be actually able to disentangle all of the lines of argumentation. Plant seems to be weaving a serious net herself. 

I was really interested in Sadie Plants historical exploration of the Turing Test. Especially the moment in which the first machine which almost manages to pass as a human being is ELIZA a computer which answers in a psychonanalytical manner, was very funny. It is as if she, just while she is on her way somewhere else silently whispers into our ears: "Have you ever noticed that psychoanalysts can be kind of like machines?"Also the progression of her argumentation in which she then launches into setting the BARRY's distincly male sexual behaviour as something not-human, she reclaims the human in a very effective way. 

Furtermore the connection in the instances in which Plant connects her view on hysteria as being a distinctly female condition, which requires the fremdzuschreibung/assignment of meaning/naming (p.134 "She is driving the psychatrist mad." You are, 'She'" I said "No, I am not." "I say you are.") is really convincing in the way she illuminates how the category of hysteria is structurally designed.