Hacking Cyberspace

David J. Gunkel

If there is a challenge here for cultural critics, then it might bepresented as the obligation to make our knowledge abouttechnoculture into something like a hacker's knowledge, ca­pable of penetrating existing systems of rationality that mightotherwise be seen as infallible.

-Andrew Ross

Knowledge about cyberspace is shaped and delimited by the questionswe ask and the kinds of inquiries we pursue. Questioning, of course, isnever objective or neutral. As Martin Heidegger demonstrates, a question,no matter how carefully articulated, necessarily harbors preconceptionsand pre-understandings that direct and regulate inquiry (24). When weask, for example, whether cyberspace portends a new world of opportu­nity that is uninhibited by the limitations of embodiment and physicalexistence, or a techno-dystopia of alienation and surveillance wheredigital artifacts supersede lived reality, or something in between these twoextremes, our query already affiliates us with the terms and conditions ofa well-established debate and employs a complex set of assumptionsconcerning the essence, function, and significance of technology (seeCritical Art Ensemble; Mattelart). This network of preconditions andassumptions usually does not appear as such within the space of a specificinquiry but constitutes the epistemological context in which any signifi­cant investigation is and must be situated. To continue to operate on thebasis of these established systems is certainly understandable, completelyrational, and potentially useful. Doing so, however, necessitates adher­ence to exigencies and prejudices that often remain unexamined, unques­tioned, and essentially unknown.

If we are to know how we know cyberspace, we need to devisemethods of investigation that target and question the network of precon­ditions and assumptions that already inform and delimit our modes ofinquiry. What is required are procedures that do not simply conform to the

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conventional questions and debates but become capable ofinfiltrating theexisting systems of rationality that structure these examinations and, assuch, are all too often taken for granted. What is necessary, as softwaremanufacturers often describe it, is the ability to "think outside the box."Such a procedure, following the suggestions of Andrew Ross, wouldtransform existing knowledge about cyberspace into a hacker's knowl­edge: this knowledge would be "capable of penetrating existing systemsof rationality that might otherwise be seen as infallible" and would be"capable of reskilling, and therefore of rewriting the cultural programs andreprogramming the social values that make room for new technologies"(132). Consequently, "hacking" suggestsan alternativemode of examinationthat learns, so to speak, how to enter, explore, and rework the basic systemsand programs that have informed andregulated investigations of cyberspace.It institutes, echoing Nietzsche's characterization of value in Beyond GoodandEvil, a fundamental revaluation of the values that have so far directedand regulated any and all evaluations of this subject matter (Ecce 310).

"Hacking Cyberspace" proposes a method of investigation thatinfiltrates, reevaluates, and reprograms the systems that have shaped anddelimited cyberspace. Despite this apparently simple description, thesetwo words and their juxtaposition necessarily resonate with noisy com­plexities that complicate this preliminary formulation. First, neither"hacking" nor "cyberspace" designate activities, entities, or concepts thatare univocal, easily defined, or immediately understood. In fact, bothterms are riddled with apparently contradictory denotations that chal­lenge, ifnot defy, conventional logic. Hacking, for example, designatesan activity that is simultaneously applauded for its creativity and reviledfor its criminal transgressions, while cyberspaceconstitutes a neologismthat ispulled in every conceivable direction by every conceivable interest.Second, the juxtaposition of these two words complicates these initialdifficulties, for hacking is an activity that is itself proper to, and thatoperates within, the contested zones of cyberspace. "Hacking Cyberspace,"however, suggests that hacking is to be expropriated from and turnedagainst its proper and indigenous situation as some form of criticalintervention. Whether this endeavor constitutes an operation that iscreative, criminal, or both, one may not at this point be able to determine.What is certain, however, is that before detailing the parameters, proce­dures, and strategies of "hacking cyberspace" one should first considerboth hacking and cyberspace. Such deliberation does not attempt tosimplify the complexity that attends these words but endeavors to learnhow to take that complexity into account.

Hacking

David J. Gunkel 799

Hacker: Originally, a compulsive computer programmer. Theword has evolved in meaning over the years. Among computerusers, hacker carries a positive connotation, meaning anyonewho creatively explores the operations of computer systems.Recently, it has taken on negative connotation, primarily throughconfusion with cracker. -

-"Is' Computer Hacking a Crime?"

Hacking does not have a single definition. According to Peter Ludlow,the word is pulled in at least two seemingly opposite and irreducibledirections:

Originally, a hacker was someone who liked to hack computer code (i.e.,write programs) or, in some cases, hack electronic hardware (i.e., designand build hardware). Thanks to the news media, "hacker" has also cometo have a negative connotation, usually meaning those who illicitly hacktheir way into other people's computer systems. Some folks have tried topreserve the original (good) sense of "hacker" by introducing the termcracker to cover the cases of electronic trespassers, but like all attemptsto fight lexical drift, their efforts have failed. ("How" 125)

The word hacking, as currently understood, designates both creativeinnovation and a form of illicit behavior. It is an activity that occupies twoextreme positions and is, for that reason, both celebrated for its insightfulinventiveness and vilified for its monstrous deviations. Consequently, thehacker has played, and continues to play, the role of both hero and villainin narratives about cyberspace.

This terminological equivocation is not, however, a form of poly semiacaused by the word's (mis)use or what Bruce Sterling has called its"unfortunate history" (Hacker 53). It is the result of an original andirreducible dissemination of meaning that has always and already affectedthe word as such. The activities that comprise what is called hacking aredelimited not by strict methodological specification and rigorous concep­tual formulation, but by particular practices and movements that onlybecome manifest through specific performances. One becomes a hackernot by ascribing to certain tenets, methods, and doctrines, but by yieldingto what Steven Levy calls the "Hands-On Imperative"-that is, engagingin and learning to perform "hacks" (27). And one learns how to hack notby adhering to instructions provided in philes or reading the text of a

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manifesto or two, but by engaging in the practice itself.' In other words,as Emmanuel Goldstein explains, "there are no leaders and no agenda"("Is Computer" 77). As a result, hacking only is what it does and what isdone with it. The general accumulation and abstraction of these variousand often highly particular practices comprises what has come to be called"the hacker ethic" (Levy 26). Here, too, however, one is confronted withan insoluble multiplicity. "There is," as Acid Phreak points out, "no onehacker ethic. Everyone has his own" ("Is Computer" 76). Hacking,therefore, comprises performances that not only resist univocal significa­tion but are also highly situated and radically empirical. 2 It is thisfundamental and irreducible differentiation that is constitutive of thepractice of hacking and responsible for the term's seemingly unrestrainedlexical drift and unfortunate history.

Whether it denotes a form of creative debugging or a mode ofunauthorized exploration and manipulation, hacking takes place as aparasitic activity that always requires a host system in which and on whichto operate. The logic of the parasite, however, is remarkably complex. Itis not, as Jacques Derrida points out, "a logic of distinction or ofopposition," for a parasite is "neither the same as nor different from thatwhich it parasites" (Limited 96). The parasite, therefore, behaves accord­ing to another kind of logic, one that exceeds the simple dichotomies ofinside/outside, legitimate/illegitimate, legal/illegal, cause/effect, and soforth. As Derrida writes in apassage that responds to and remains parasiticon a text written by John Searle,

the parasite is by definition never simply external, never simply some­thing that can be excluded from or kept outside of the body "proper," shutout from the "familial" table or house. Parasitism takes place when theparasite (called thus by the owner ,j ealously defending his own, his oikos)comes to live off the life of the body in which it resides-and when,reciprocally, the host incorporates the parasite to an extent, willy nillyoffering it hospitality: providing it with a place. The parasite then "takesplace." And at bottom, whatever violently "takes place" or occupies a siteis always something of a parasite. (Limited 90)

Parasitism comprises an eccentric operation that exceeds the traditionallogic of either/or-orwhat is sometimes called the "law ofnon-contradic­tion." The parasite occupies a structurally unique position that is neithersimply inside nor outside. It is the outside in the inside and the insideoutside of itself. The parasite, therefore, is never simply external norextemalizable. For this reason, it is difficult to describe the status or

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activities of a parasite without, as is already demonstrated here, using akind of convoluted logic that operates at the very limits of language. Thisgeneral characterization of parasitism contains several important conse­quences for understanding the activities of hacking.

First, as a parasitic activity, hacking draws all its strength, strategies,and tools from the system on which and in which it operates. The hackdoes not, strictly speaking, introduce anything new into the system onwhich it works but derives everything from the host's own protocols andprocedures. It does so not to neutralize or to confirm the system but tounderstand how it operates and to experiment with different manipula­tions that deploy the system otherwise-that is, in excess of the restrictedpossibilities articulated by the system's initial programming. As Levydescribes it, "Hackers believe that essential lessons can be learned aboutthe systems-about the world-from taking things apart, seeing how theywork, and using this knowledge to create new and even more interesting,things" (27). Consequently, hacking is, as Sterling suggests, a form of"exploring and manipulating" that not only learns how a specific systembehaves but also discovers how to employ its tools and procedures againstand in excess of the necessary limitations of its own programming(Hacker 64). Donna Haraway terms this curious form of exploration andmanipulation "blasphemy," which she distinguishes from "apostasy"(149). Whereas apostasy designates a mere renunciation and abandon­ment by which one comes to occupy a position that literally stands apartor separated from something, blasphemy comprises a calculated responsethat understands, acknowledges, and continually works within an estab­lished system. Like a parasite, the blasphemer is not an alien proceedingfrom and working on the outside. The blasphemer is an insider, who notonly understands the intricacies of the system but does so to such an extentthat she or he is capable of fixating on its necessary but problematiclacunae, exhibiting and employing them in such a way that disrupts thesystem to which the blasphemer initially and must continually belong.Although these operations can be reduced to and written off as mereadolescent pranks, they comprise more often than not a form of seriousplay.

Second, this parasitic or blasphemous operation is neither simplydestructive nor corrective. On the one hand, hacking does not comprise aform of random violence or simple vandalism. Despite Webster's defini­tion-"to cut with repeated irregular or unskillful blows"-hackingcomprises a precise and calculated incision into a system, program, ornetwork. If this incision appears to be "irregular" or "unskillful," it is

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designated as such only from the perspective of the system that did not andcould not see it coming. From the perspective of the hack, however, thisoccupation is always precisely calculated. Furthermore, in procuringaccess to a system, the hack does not aim at destroying the host on whichit operates. To do so would mean nothing less than a form of suicide. Thisexigency, which is fundamental to all parasitic endeavors, has beencodified in one of the (un)official hacker commandments: "thou shalt notdestroy" (Slatalla and Quittner 40). Hacking, like any parasitic action,works within its host in a manner that simultaneously preserves andsustains that in which and on which it functions. Destruction of the hostsystem is neither its purpose nor an acceptable alternative (Denning 146;Slatalla and Quittner 3). This apparently negative activity does notcomprise a form of corrective criticism, which is how all negations of asystem come to be reincorporated into and domesticated by that whichthey appear to negate. Although a number ofhacks and hackers have beenput to work for the enhancement of system security and administra­tion, hacking in general resists a reemployment that has the effect ofreappropriating so-called transgressions as a form of corrective criti­cism. Hacking deliberately exceeds recuperative gestures that wouldput its activities to work for the continued success and development ofthe host's system.

Hacking is content to be neither a friend nor an enemy. Eitherpositiononly serves to reconfirm and justify the system in which and on which itoperates. As Richard Stallman points out, hacking is often presented withtwo options, neither of which is adequate or appropriate: "One way is forhackers to become part of the security-maintenance establishment. Theother, more subtle, way is for a hacker to become the security-breakingphreak the media portray. By shaping ourselves into the enemy of theestablishment, we uphold the establishment" ("Is Computer" 75). Formu­lated as either a useful component of the established system or itsdialectical opposite, hacking would serve and reconfirm the system inwhich and on which it works. Consequently, hacking endeavors to resistthe gravitational pull of either option. It occupies a thoroughly eccentricposition that is both in between these two extremes and neither one nor theother. Because hacking works against such recuperation that makes itserve the system as either negative counterpart or corrective critique, the"transgressions" of hacking-defined as such by the system that ishacked-must be described otherwise. "My crime," writes The Mentor,"is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for"(71). Because hacking cannot be simply reduced to a destructive interven-

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tion or corrective criticism, its operations appear only as a kind ofoutsmarting and outmaneuvering of the system. Outsmarting, however, isneither destructive nor critical. It is, in the usual sense of the word, neithergood nor bad. Its logic and value remain otherwise. As a result, outsmart­ing cannot be forgiven, for it exceeds the very definition of wrongdoingthat is the condition of possibility for forgiveness.

Finally, hacking exceeds the traditional understanding of agency.Hackers cannot be praised or blamed in the usual manner for what it is theydo or do not do. In other words, hackers do not, in any strict sense of theterm, cause the disruptions or general systems failures exhibited in and bythe activities of hacking. Hacking only fixates on and manipulates anaporia, bug, or back door that is always and already present within andconstitutive of the system as such. Emmanuel Goldstein, editor of 2600,3has described this situation in the following way: "Hackers have becomescapegoats: We discover the gaping holes in the system and then getblamed for the flaws" ("Is Computer" 78). According to this logic, anyhacker crackdown is simply a form of "blaming the messenger." Thehacker can neither be credited nor blamed for doing something (or notdoing something) as an active and willful agent. Instead, the activities ofhacking must be seen as highly attentive and even compulsive responsesto specific systems that both call for and make the hack possible in and bytheir very systems' design. Ifhacking admits ofany form ofagency, it canonly be as a kind of agent provocateur. Hacking, therefore, is not someexternal catastrophe-a kind of external threat and profound danger­that befalls an innocent and pure system. It develops from a necessary andunavoidable deformity that always and already resides within and definesthe proper formation of the system as such."Hacking takes place as theteasing out of these deformations that, although constitutive of thesystem's original programming, often go undetected by the system inwhich and through which they first occur. Consequently, blaming or evencrediting the hacker is as naive and simplistic as trying to build imperviousfirewalls and security systems that keep the hacker outside. The situationis much more complex and necessarily exceeds the binary logic thattypically distinguishes subject from object, active from passive, andinside from outside. Hacking works parasitically: it takes place in and byoccupying and feeding off a host that always and already has made a placefor it to take place. It is for this reason that, despite the valiant efforts oflaw enforcement, hacking cannot be stopped or even hindered by crackingdown on and punishing individual hackers. As The Mentor warns, "I ama hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you

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can't stop us all ... " (71). Even if the authorities target and stop one hackeror even a formidable gang of hackers, hacking will persist, for it is not theresult of individual agents with some kind of deviant and malicious intent.First and foremost, it arises out of the resources of the systems andprograms to which individual hacks respond and with which they interact.

Cyberspace

Cyberspace must be one of the most contested words in contem­porary culture. Wherever the term appears, it becomes thesubject of speculation and controversy, as critics and propo­nents argue over its function and future. This tug of war over theterrain of cyberspace . . . has generated more confusion andrevealed more paradoxes than it has created clarity.

-Michelle Kendrick

Technically speaking, cyberspace is not a technology or even an ensembleof technologies. Despite the fact that the word has been routinelyemployed to name recent advancements in computer technology, tele­communications networking, and immersion user-interface systems,cyberspace is neither the product of technological research and develop­ment nor a conglomeration of hardware and software. It is a fictioninvented and prototyped in a work of science fiction that was authored, sothe story goes, on a manual typewriter by a self-proclaimed computerilliterate. Consequently, cyberspace is not the product of technologicalinnovation developed in the dust-resistant white rooms of govemment­sponsored research; rather, cyberspace comprises a constellation of ideasabout technology and technoculture that was created and deployed in thelow-tech, print and paper realm of William Gibson's imaginativeNeuromancer. In this work of fiction, Gibson introduced and first de­scribed cyberspace as a "consensual hallucination"-that is, an artifi­cially created perception or vision that is common to a specific communityof users. Since its initial introduction in 1984, this curious neologism hascome to be employed by a number of researchers, scholars, andpractitioners to designate actual technologies and the possibilities forenhanced interaction and communication that have been and will becreated by such systems. As Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrowsobserve, "cyberspace is best considered as a generic term which refers toa cluster of different technologies, some familiar, some only recently

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available, some being developed and some still fictional, all ofwhich havein common the ability to simulate environments within which humans caninteract" (5). Consequently, cyberspace, in both its content and form,comprises a consensual hallucination. The neologism is employed notonly to name the techniques and technologies used for producing artifi­cially created, interactive environments, but to define a common vision ofthe current and future state of communication and information technologythat has been proffered, developed, and shared by a community ofresearchers, theorists, and practitioners.

Although it may name a kind of collective fantasy, cyberspace, as theword and concept have been employed and delimited, by no means admitsof a single vision or univocal determination. It has been, from the momentof its fabrication, already open to and afflicted by a multiplicity ofcompeting and complex designations. A small number of theorists andpractitioners understand the word to denote either a form of technologyor a collection of technologies that have also been designated by othernames such as the Internet, virtual reality, computer simulation, andcomputer-mediated communication (see Biocca and Levy; Featherstoneand Burrows). For the vast majority, it names not a technology or even anensemble of technologies but the perceived, interactive environments thatare and can be created by the hybrid of current and future communicationand information systems (see Dery; Jones; Mitchell; Rheingold; Rotzer;Shields; Stone). For some, these cyberspaces are unquestionably contem­porary, futuristic, and even postmodern (see Negroponte; Poster; Turkle).For others, they comprise ancient and familiar territory: an extension ofwestern metaphysics or a continuation of the age-old desire to live in analternate, mythic realm (see Benedikt; Heim). For many, cyberspacecomprises a dark and dystopic image of technological hegemony andcolonization (see Eisenstein; Gibson; Sardar and Ravetz). While for anumber of optimists, it names new possibilities for democracy, virtualcommunity, and global cooperation (see Barlow; Dyson et a1.).

Cyberspace is not limited to extant, recently developed, or evenfictitious technologies but comprises an entire system of ideas, practices,operations, and expectations that are not only derived from but circulatewithin a number of different sources, not all of which are, technicallyspeaking, a matter of technology. This has at least two consequences thatare pertinent to any consideration of the topic. First, cyberspace is notsimply a product of technological innovation but also a result of thevarious ways by which it is and has been addressed, investigated, anddiscussed. Because of this, what cyberspace is and what it can become is

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as much a function of new developments in the hardware and software ofcommunication and information technology as it is of the various tech­niques used to examine, describe, and situate cyberspace in short storiesand novels, scholarly articles and technical specifications, popular booksand magazines, film narratives and television documentaries, comicbooks and art, and Web sites and online discussions. Consequently, thewords, images, and various discursive techniques used to present anddebate issues involving cyberspace are not just representations of extantor developing technology but constitute, as already demonstrated inGibson's Neuromancer, appropriate sites for the production of andstruggle over significance.

Second, cyberspace is not and cannot be limited to the sphere oftechnology or applied science. Its various configurations and manifoldsignification are always and already influenced by work in a number ofseemingly unrelated and not necessarily technological fields. This isimmediately evident in the wide variety of texts addressing the subject ofcyberspace that have been published in the last two decades of what iscalled the second Christian millennium. These texts include works inphilosophy (Dixon and Cassidy; Hartmann; Heim; Taylor and Saarinen;Paul Virilio), geography and architecture (Benedikt; Boyer; Hillis;Mitchell; Spiller), theology and religion (Davis; Wertheim; Zaleski),anthropology and cultural studies (Dery; Leeson; Porter; Sardar andRavetz; Shields), communication and media studies (Biocca and Levy;Jones; Mattelart; Morse; Robins and Webster; Shields), sociology andpsychology (Featherstone and Burrows; Schroeder; Stone; Turkle), po­litical science and women's studies (Balsamo; Eisenstein; Haraway;Hunter; Poster), and art and fiction (Critical Art Ensemble; Druckrey;Gibson; Penny; Stephenson; Sterling). This diversity means not only thatcyberspace is open to a wide variety of disciplines and approaches but alsothat no area can escape its reach. Or, as Benjamin Woolley succinctlydescribes the situation, "No one can avoid becoming active citizens ofcyberspace" (134). This fact complicates the examination of cyberspaceby making it a thoroughly transdisciplinary object; it also disables inadvance any and all attempts to avoid dealing with the topic by restrictingit to a kind of technical quarantine in the disciplines of computer science,communications studies, or telecommunications practices.

Hacking Cyberspace

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If there had been no computer, deconstruction could never havehappened.

-Mark Taylor and Esa Saarinen

Hacking proposes a mode of investigation that both learns how toinfiltrate systems that have usually gone unexamined and developsstrategies for exploring their functions and reprogramming their opera­tions. This undertaking, like other blasphemous and parasitic endeavors,does not aim at either confirming or refuting the systems in question; itworks on and in them in order to learn how and why they function in theway that they do and to experiment with alternative deployments of theirown programming. What is hacked in this case, however, are not indi­vidual computer components and programs but the various systems thatstructure, inform, and program cyberspace. Hacking cyberspace concernsan analysis that does not target technical equipment per se but works onand in the general infrastructure through which this technical equipmentand the cultural context in which such equipment appears have come tobe determined, delimited, and debated. What is hacked are the systemsthat connect and (inter)network the various technologies, epistemologies,narrative techniques, research practices, texts, applications, and imagesthat comprise what is called cyberspace. For this reason, the hack mustemploy a mode of operation that is appropriate to this complex object andtask. It, therefore, will and can only take place as deconstruction, which,it turns out, comprises nothing less than a form of system analysis.

Misunderstandings of deconstruction and what has sometimes beeninappropriately termed the "method of deconstruction" or"deconstructivism" are something ofan institutional (mal)practice. Thesemisunderstandings are not, however, the result of introducing complexityinto the issue. They proceed from simplifying all too quickly a complexitythat has not been fully understood or appreciated. Consequently, despiteor because of these misappropriations and oversimplifications, which alltoo often come to stand in for what they always and already misunder­stand, one must assert, in the first place, that deconstruction does notindicate "to take apart" or "to un-construct." What it signifies is neithersimply synonymous with "destruction" nor merely antithetical to "con­struction." As Derrida points out inLimited Inc, "the' de-' of deconstructionsignifies not the demolition ofwhat is constructing itself, but rather whatremains to be thought beyond the constructivist or destructionist scheme"

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(147). For this reason, deconstruction is something entirely other thanwhat is understood and delimited by the conceptual opposition situatedbetween construction and destruction. To put it schematically,deconstruction comprises a kind of general strategy by which to intervenein this and all other conceptual oppositions that have organized andcontinue to organize and regulate western systems of knowing. Such anoperation, however, does not simply devolve into untruth or relativismbut intervenes in the system that first makes possible the meaning of andthe very difference between truth/falsity and determinism/relativism.

Defining deconstruction or even describing a "method" ofdeconstruction is exceedingly difficult ifnot impossible. This complica­tion does not derive from some "Derridean obscurantism" but is systemicand necessary. As Derrida notes in Limited Inc, "Deconstruction does notexist somewhere, pure, proper, self-identical, outside of its inscriptions inconflictual and differentiated contexts; it 'is' only what it does and whatis done with it, there where it takes place. It is difficult today to give aunivocal definition or an adequate description of this 'taking place.' Thisabsence of univocal definitions is not 'obscurantist,' it respectfully payshomage to a new, very new Aufkliirung [enlightenment or, literally,clearing-up]" (141). Despite the all but unavoidable employment ofsentences with the grammatical and logical form of"S is P," deconstructioncannot, as Briankle Chang concludes, "be adequately understood" in thisabstract and generalized form (119). Consequently, deconstruction isonly what it does and what is done with it in a specific context. This hasat least two consequences. First, deconstruction does not constitute, atleast in the usual sense of the words, either a method or theory. "There is,"as Derrida insists, "no one, single deconstruction" but only specific andirreducible instances in which deconstruction takes place. Becausedeconstruction cannot be abstracted and formalized apart from its specificperformances, it cannot resolve into theory as opposed to practice ormethod as opposed to application. Although this renders deconstructionresistant to customary forms of methodological articulation and under­standing, it is necessary and unavoidable if it is to be understood at all.This is, as Derrida is well aware, "precisely what gets on everyone'snerves" (Limited 141).

Second, because deconstruction is not a method in the usual sense ofthe word, one cannot learn or understand deconstruction by appealing toabstract formulas provided by Derrida or anyone else for that matter (andDerrida would be the first to question this appeal to an author's authority).Instead, the contours of deconstruction will have been traced, as Chang

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observes, only by focusing "on the actual operation of deconstruction, onwhat happens when deconstruction takes place" (119). Such a tracing wasprovided in an interview that Jean-Louis Houdebine and Guy Scarpettastaged with Derrida in 1971 for the academic journal Promesse. In thecourse of this dialogue, Derrida, who was asked to reflect on the directionand development of his own work, provided a basic, though lengthy,characterization of deconstruction that was derived from the actual worksand workings of deconstruction:

What interested me then, that I am attempting to pursue along other linesnow, was ... a kind of general strategy of deconstruction. The latter isto avoid both simply neutralizing the binary oppositions of metaphysicsand simply residing within the closed field of these oppositions, therebyconfirming it.

Therefore we must proceed using a double gesture, according to aunity that is both systematic and in and of itself divided, a double writing,that is, a writing that is in and of itself multiple, what I called, in "Ladouble seance," a double science. On the one hand, we must traverse aphase of overturning. To do justice to this necessity is to recognize thatin a classical philosophical opposition we are not dealing with thepeaceful coexistence of a vis-a-vis, but rather with a violent hierarchy.One of the two terms governs the other ... or has the upper hand. Todeconstruct the opposition, first of all, is to overturn the hierarchy at agiven moment. To overlook this phase of overturning is to forget theconflictual and subordinating structure of opposition. Therefore onemight proceed too quickly to a neutralization that inpractice would leavethe previous field untouched, leaving one no hold on the previousopposition, thereby preventing any means of intervening in the fieldeffectively ....

That being said-and on the other hand-to remain in this phase isstill to operate on the terrain of and from within the deconstructed system.By means of this double, and precisely stratified, dislodged and dislodg­ing, writing, we must also mark the interval between inversion, whichbrings low what was high, and the irruptive emergence of a new"concept," a concept that can no longer be, and never could be, includedin the previous regime. (Positions 41-42)

Deconstruction comprises a general strategy for intervening in meta­physical oppositions. These oppositions do not just belong to a philoso­phy or even the discipline of philosophy. They are and have beenconstitutive of the entire fabric of what is called the western episteme. AsMark Dery explains, "Western systems of meaning are underwritten by

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binary oppositions: body/soul, other/self, matter/spirit, emotion/reason,natural/artificial, and so forth. Meaning is generated through exclusion:The first term of each hierarchical dualism is subordinated to the second,privileged one" (Escape 244). These binary oppositions, through whichmeaning is produced and regulated, inform and delimit forms of knowingwithin the horizon of what is called western science, up to and includingthose through which one would describe and criticize this tradition assuch. Deconstruction, therefore, constitutes a mode of critical interven­tion that takes aim at the binary oppositions through which westernsystems of knowing, including itself, have been organized and articulatedand does so in a way that does not simply neutralize or remain within thehegemony of the system. In this way, deconstruction is similar to hacking:it comprises a general strategy for "thinking outside the box," where "thebox" is defined as the total enclosure that delimits the very possibility ofany kind of thought whatsoever.

Because of this somewhat complex undertaking, deconstructioninvolves two related but irreducible operations or phases. The firstcomprises inversion. In a traditional metaphysical opposition, the twoterms are not equal, One is always given precedence over the other and,therefore, not only rules over it but determines this other as its negativeand counterpart. As Derrida explains, "an opposition of metaphysicalconcepts ... is never the face-to-face of two terms, but a hierarchy and anorder of subordination" (Margins 329). The inversion of this hierarchy,in the first place, "brings low what was high" (Positions 42). Thisrevolutionary gesture seeks to overturn a specific binary opposition byinverting the relative positions occupied by its two, dialectically opposedterms. This inversion, however, like all revolutionary operations, doeslittle or nothing to challenge the system that is overturned. In merelyexchanging the relative positions occupied by the two metaphysicalconcepts, inversion still maintains, though in an inverted form, the binaryopposition in which and on which it operates. Inversion, therefore, doesnot dispute the essential structure of the metaphysical opposition but onlyexchanges the relative positions occupied by its two components. Conse­quently, mere inversion essentially changes nothing, as Derrida observes,for it still operates "on the terrain of and from the deconstructed system"(Positions 42).

Although deconstruction begins with a phase of inversion, inversionalone is not sufficient. For this reason, deconstruction comprises anirreducible double gesture-or what Barbara Biesecker calls "a two­step," in which inversion is only the first phase (16). Again, as Derrida

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points out, "we must also mark the interval between inversion, whichbrings low what was high, and the irruptive emergence of a new' concept, 'a concept that can no longer be, and never could be, included in theprevious regime" (Positions 42). Deconstruction, therefore, comprisesboth the overturning of a traditional metaphysical opposition and theirruptive emergence of a new concept that is displaced outside the scopeand comprehension of the system in question. This new concept is, strictlyspeaking, not a concept (which does not mean that it is simply the oppositeof the conceptual order), for it always and already exceeds the system ofdualities that define the conceptual order "as well as the nonconceptualorder with which the conceptual order is articulated" (Margins 329). Thisconcept, therefore, can only be called a concept by a kind of deliberate andtransgressive "paleonymy." This new concept is what Derrida calls, byanalogy, an undecidable. It is, first and foremost, that "that can no longerbe included within philosophical (binary) opposition, but which, how­ever, inhabit philosophical opposition, resisting and disorganizing it,without ever constituting a third term, without ever leaving room for asolution in the form of speculative dialectics ... " (Positions 43). Theundecidable new concept, then, occupies a position that is in between orin/at the margins of a traditional, metaphysical opposition. It is simulta­neously neither/nor and either/or. It does not resolve into one or the otherof the two terms that comprise a metaphysical opposition nor constitutea third term that would mediate their difference in a synthetic unity, alaHegelian or Marxian dialectics. The undecidable, therefore, is positionedin such a way that it both inhabits and operates in excess of the binaryoppositions by which and through which systems of knowledge havebeen organized and articulated. Consequently, it cannot be describedor marked in language except (as is exemplified here) by engaging inwhat Derrida calls a "bifurcated writing" that compels the traditionalphilosophemes to articulate, however incompletely and insufficiently,what necessarily resists and displaces all possible articulation (Posi­tions 42).

Finally, there neither is nor can be finality, for deconstructioncomprises, as Derrida insists within the space of the same interview,something of an "interminable analysis" (Positions 42). The analysis isinterminable for two reasons. First, deconstruction, following the lessonof Hegel's notion of "speculative science," understands that it cannotsimply situate itself outside what it deconstructs. Deconstruction alwaystakes place as aparasitic operation that works within a specific system andby employing tools and strategies derived from that system. It cannot,

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therefore, simply remove itself from this milieu and stand outside whatdefines and delimits its very possibility. For this reason, deconstructionis never simply finished with that in which and on which it operates buttakes place as a kind of never-ending engagement with the systems inwhich it takes place and is necessarily situated. This is perhaps bestexemplified by Derrida's comment on his deconstructive reading ofHegel: "We will never be finished with the reading or rereading of Hegel,and, in a certain way, I do nothing other than attempt to explain myself onthis point" (Positions 77). Second, because the metaphysical oppositionson which and in which deconstruction works comprise the very logic andpossibility of discourse within the western episteme, "the hierarchy ofdual oppositions always reestablishes itself' (Positions 42). Conse­quently, the result of deconstruction always risks becoming reappropri­ated into traditional, metaphysical oppositions through which it comes tobe articulated, explained, and understood. This fact is probably bestillustrated by considering the recent fate of deconstruction. Even thoughthe practice of deconstruction, as exemplified and explained in the workof Derrida and others, exceeds the binary oppositions of destruction/construction, it is continually understood and explained through associa­tion with forms of destructive criticism that come to be defined throughopposition to the (positive) work of construction. For this reason,deconstruction must continually work against this form of reinscriptionthat not only threatens its conclusions but is nevertheless a necessary andunavoidable outcome. Consequently, deconstruction-unlike other formsof critical analysis that have a definite point ofinitiation and conclusion­is never simply finished with the object that it analyzes; nor is it able tobring its project to completion. This is, once again, one of those aspectsof deconstruction that gets on everyone's nerves, precisely because itdisturbs what Derrida has called "a good many habits and comforts"(Limited 127). However, the fact that this conclusion "hits a nerve" isnot unimportant; rather, as Nietzsche demonstrates in The Gay Sci­ence, it is an indication that the analysis grapples with a set ofinfluential but heretofore unquestioned assumptions, values, andprejudices.

Hacking Cyberspace II

David J. Gunkel 813

Hackers are not sloganeers. They are doers, take-things-in­handers. They are the opposite of philosophers: They don't waitfor language to catch up to them. Their arguments are theiractions.

-"Is Computer Hacking a Crime?"

Hacking cyberspace is an operation that employs strategies ofdeconstruction to address and to intervene in systems of rationality bywhich the significance and possibilities of cyberspace have been articu­lated, delimited, and organized. Because of the relative complexity of thesystems in question, this undertaking necessarily requires a multiplicityof different operations and strategies, each of which is specific to theparticular process, program, or protocol on which it operates. Conse­quently, one cannot describe or even begin to comprehend all possiblemodes of operation. What is possible, however, is to provide a briefaccount of some recent hacks that have been deployed within and againstcyberspace. Such an accounting follows the example of an activity thathas been fundamental to the growth and development of hacking­namely, phile writing. These philes-such as the ones included atPhrack.com and in other hacker forums-are simultaneously resumes ofrecent hacker activities, sets of basic instructions, and open invitations todo additional hacking.

My first attempt at hacking cyberspace began with a project titled"Virtual Geographies" (Gunkel and Gunkel). The hack addresses anumber of rhetorical techniques that have invaded and occupied cyberspacefrom the beginning. Immediately after its introduction in 1984, cyberspacewas proclaimed the "electronic frontier" and a "new world." Terminologylike this saturates the technical, theoretical, and popular understandingsof cyberspace. From the "cowboys" of Gibson's Neuromancer to theexciting "new worlds" announced by John Walker of Autodesk, fromJohn Perry Barlow and Mitchell Kapor's Electronic Frontier Foundationto the pioneering work of Ivan Sutherland and Scott Furness, the spirit offrontierism has infused the rhetoric and logic of cyberspace. Althoughcertainly useful for explaining the implications and possibilities of newcommunication and information technology, these designations are notwithout significant limitations and consequences. In particular, they notonly link the concept of cyberspace to Columbia's voyages of discoveryand the wider network of European and American expansionism but

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communicate with the exercise of cultural power that is implied by theserather violent undertakings. Consequently, understanding and describingcyberspace through rhetorical devices that are explicitly connected to theage of exploration and the American West opens a discursive andideological exchange between cyberspace and the hegemony of frontierism.Hacking this system involves modes of intervention that both trace thecontours of these complex associations and develop counter-hegemonicpractices that contribute to a general decoIonization of cyberspace and theways that it is imagined and represented.

My second hack targets the transcendentalism that has informed anddelimited the subject matter of cyberspace ("Virtually"). With its intro­duction in Gibson's Neuromancer, cyberspace has been considered to bea realm of pure information that is disengaged from and uncontaminatedby the "meat of the body," physical space, or even terrestrial limitations.This transcendentalism, however, is not anything technological but isinformed and directed by concepts introduced and developed by Chris­tianity and by western philosophy and science. It is for this reason thatNietzsche grouped the various traditions that comprise what is calledwestern thought under the general term "despisers of the body" (Thus146). This hack deconstructs the corpus amittere (literally, loss of thebody) that constitutes a loathing of the body that has been and iscontinually uploaded into and employed by the systems of cyberspace.Because this transcendental ideology extends beyond the realm ofcyberspace into fundamental ideas of theology and philosophy, the hacktakes aim not only at the material of cyberspace but at the doctrine ofdualism that is deployed in the history of western thought.

My third hack is occupied with the concept of humanism that hasbeen rampant in the theories and practices of cyberspace ("We"). Ittakes aim at the cyborg, a monstrous hybrid of human and machine that,on the one hand, names the current state of what used to be called humannature as it becomes wired into new forms of communication andinformation technology and, on the other hand, indicates apotential threatthat appears to undermine the very definition and dignity of the human.In addressing this complex entity, the hack of humanism does not seek toresolve, to confront, or even to resist this apparently monstrous figure.Like the Borg of Star Trek, it knows that resistance is futile, that thecyborg is not a possible future but already part and parcel of the humanistpast and that those entities who deceptively thought themselves humanwere always already and nothing more or less than cyborg. As a result, thehack does not introduce the cyborg as some catastrophic crisis that could

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be resisted with any amount of strength or conservative energy. Rather,it simply locates and points out a fundamental monstrosity that is alreadyconstitutive of the system of humanism that it subsequently appears tothreaten. Accordingly, the third hack does not consider the cyborg assome recent crisis that has come to threaten humanity in the form oftechnology. Rather, it merely points out a necessary deformation thatis always and already afflicting and deconstructing concepts of thehuman and technology.

Conclusion

A hacker is someone who experiments with systems. . . .[Hacking] is playing with systems and making them do whatthey were never intended to do.

-Dorothy Denning

Cyberspace comprises what is arguably one of the noisiest and mostcontested words in contemporary culture. Its terminological equivocationis not the product of lexical drift or polysemia but is the result of afundamental and irreducible indetermination. According to Gibson'sown account, the word cyberspace was assembled from "small andreadily available components oflanguage. Neologic spasm: the primal actof pop poetics. Preceded any concept whatever. Slick and hollow­awaiting received meaning" ("Academy" 27). Cyberspace is, from themoment of its fabrication, radically indeterminate. It comprises an emptysignifier that not only antedates any formal referent but readily andwithout significant resistance receives almost every meaning that comesto be assigned to it. For this reason, cyberspace has capitulated andcontinues to yield to the imposition of all kinds of determinations, mostof which are not, technically speaking, matters of technology. Theyinclude, among others, metaphors of the new world and frontier, meta­physical assumptions concerning the material of the body, and evaluativecriteria derived from the tradition of humanism.

Hacking introduces a method of analysis that targets and works onthese various components. Unlike other critical endeavors, however, itdoes not seek either to confirm or to dispute them. Instead, it constitutesa blasphemous form of intervention that learns how to manipulate andexploit necessary lacunae that are constitutive of, but generally unac­knowledged by, that which is being investigated by the hacker. Hackingdoes so not to be mischievous or clever, but to locate, demonstrate, and

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reprogram the systems of rationality that not only determine cyberspacebut generally escape critical investigation precisely because they aretaken for granted and assumed to be infallible. Hacking cyberspace as amethod of analysis, therefore, does not take sides in the conventionaldebates and arguments that compose cyberspace. It does not, for example,either advocate or dispute the various positions espoused by techno­utopians, techno-dystopians, or the various hybrids that attempt syntheticcoalitions between these dialectical opposites. Instead, it endeavors tounderstand and to manipulate the cultural programs and social values thatdictate and direct this and every other dialectic by which cyberspace isconstructed, debated, and evaluated. In doing so, hacking exposescyberspace to alternative configurations and eccentric possibilities thatdo not conform to usual expectations, behave according to acceptedcriteria, or register on conventional scales of value. Consequently, theoutcome of hacking cyberspace is neither good nor bad, positive nornegative, constructive nor destructive; it comprises a general strategy bywhich to explore and manipulate the systems of rationality by which thesemodes of assessment become possible, function, and make sense.

Northern Illinois UniversityDeKalb, Illinois

Notes

1. Philes are the primary means by which hacker activity is reported andarchived. Written by hackers for hackers, philes are either posted online indiscussion forums such as Phrack.com or distributed in hacker publications suchas 2600: The Hacker's Quarterly (see note 3). Philes are not literal recipes forhacking but comprise resumes of recent hacker operations, sets of basicinstructions, and open invitations to do additional hacking.

2. This may be one reason why publications addressing hacking and hackerstake the form not of theoretical treatises but of individual case studies thatexamine particular hacks or hackers. The key text on the subject, Levy'sHackers, for example, chronicles the people, technology, and events involvedin what he defines as the three distinct phases of computer hacking: "the truehackers of the MIT artificial intelligence lab in the fifties and sixties; thepopulist, less sequestered hardware hackers in California in the seventies; andthe young game hackers who made their mark in the personal computer age ofthe eighties" (x). Similar chronicles of specific people and events are providedin the accounts of phreakers, a neologism that names the illegal appropriationand manipulation of the telephone system, and what Rosenbaum initially called"computer phreakers," the prototype of what would become the "outlaw

David J. Gunkel 817

hacker" that is so prevalent in recent literature on the subject. These texts providebiographies of individual phreakers or hackers such as Captain Crunch, the MadHacker, Kevin Mitnick, and Mark Abene; narrative accounts of the exploits ofhacker gangs such as the Legion of Doom, the Masters of Deception, andNuPrometheus League; and detailed treatment of particular hacks and lawenforcement responses such as the 1989 crack of Apple software, the 1990Martin Luther King Day Crash of the AT&T long distance network, and theSecret Service and Chicago Task Force raids. The specificity of these varioustexts is immediately evident in their titles: Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers onthe Computer Frontier (Hafner and Markoff); TheHacker Crackdown: Law andDisorder on the Electronic Frontier (Sterling); Approaching Zero: The Ex­traordinary Underworld of Hackers, Phreakers, Virus Writers, and KeyboardCriminals (Mungo and Clough); Masters of Deception: The Gang that RuledCyberspace (Slatalla and Quittner); The Fugitive Game: Online with KevinMitnick (Littman); The Watchman: The Twisted Life and Crimes of SerialHacker Kevin Poulsen (Littman); At Large: The Strange Case of the World'sBiggest Internet Invasion (Freedman and Mann); and Cyberwars: Espionage onthe Internet (Guisnel).

3.2600 has long been recognized as the "hacker's quarterly." The magazine'sname comes from the 2600-cycle tone that had been used by Bell Telephone forswitching long-distance phone calls in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Phreakers,such as John Draper (a k a Captain Crunch), discovered and exploited thisfeature to hack the Bell system's network.

4. On the difference between catastrophe and monstrosity, see Derrida, OfGrammatology; Gunkel, "Scary."

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