Sci-fi cyborgs - a Webliography

[This post links to online journals. Please log in to the UWA SSO (single sign-on) service (e.g. through MyUWA) in this window in order to access these pages.]

Kakoudaki, D, (2002) “Spectacles of History: Race Relations, Melodrama, and the Science Fiction/Disaster Film”, Camera Obscura, vol. 17 no. 2, pp. 108-153. Accessed at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/co/summary/v017/17.2kakoudaki.html on 6 Sept 2010.

Kakoudaki begins with a strong claim about the connection between science fiction and the real world – we often understand what is happening in real life by reference to popular science fiction. Kakoudaki mentions that in the news reports following the September 11 attacks, someone mentioned that the footage was “just like Independence Day.” This serves to strengthen the importance of what is presented in science fiction. This paper looks in particular at what we may call disaster science fiction films, e.g. Independence Day, Deep Impact, and Volcano. These stories are important ways of thinking about race and gender, because there is no sentient outside force to fight against – no Other – and thus there is more scope for narratives about e.g. female and black characters that are counted as Us (or as U.S. – these films are always about America, Kakoudaki points out).

Kirby, D A, (2004) “Extrapolating Race in GATTACA: Genetic Passing, Identity, and the Science of Race”, Literature and Medicine, vol. 23 no. 1, pp. 184-200. Accessed at http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?did=676260071&Fmt=7&clientId=20923&RQT=309&VName=PQD on 6 Sept 2010.

As in the Kakoudaki paper, Kirby observes how science fiction films give us ways of understanding what is happening in our own time. In this case, the film GATTACA isused as a paradigm example of “extrapolative” science fiction, which takes our current ways of using technology and attempts to trace its trajectory to it logical conclusion. GATTACA, Kirby claims, shows some of the consequences of geneticization (seeing humans reductively, as composed of their genes), and thus offers a critique of this process. However, the film fails to recognize other problems present in our current practices, namely, the attempt by some social conservatives to define race by genes. This is a problem for the film. If GATTACA is our way of understanding why eugenics is to be avoided, it may also blind us to the dangers to marginalized races of some ways of defining race. More generally, Kirby’s claim is that if science fiction imagines our future, it must do so carefully lest it cause serious harm. The idea I find most important here, and most worthy of consideration, is that science fiction, being extrapolative, must may inadvertently misrepresent the present, having problematic consequence for both present and future if it does not.

Lavender, III, I, (2004) “Technicity: AI and Cyborg Ethnicity in The Matrix”, Extrapolation, vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 437-458. Accessed at http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?did=811521941&Fmt=7&clientId=20923&RQT=309&VName=PQD on 6 Sept 2010.

Noting that various films conflate technology with ethnicity, Lavender attempts to understand the post-human future of race, conceptualized through the framework of technicity, i.e. technologically based ethnicity. Lavender does this by looking at The Matrix. Contrary to the cyborgs given to us by Haraway, and the utopia envisioned in the MCI advertisement; in this film at least, race has not been abolished. Instead, new ethnicities – technicities – arise, and a struggle for dominance remains. This is seen in The Matrix where places such as the virtual dojo where Neo trains are programmed from outside, yet still follow stereotypes. Furthermore, whereas according to Haraways idea of the cyborg is meant to destroy the line between human and machine, in the film we find ourselves discriminating between natural-born human, unplugged human, and the evil AI. Lavender’s point is that if The Matrix is one way of imagining the future, then we will still find ourselves using new ways of discriminating against race, this time in the form of technicity. Thus this concept challenges any view of the cyborg that sees it as being an easy way of navigating through current troubles with race and gender.

Silvio, C, (1999) “Refiguring the radical cyborg in Mamoru Oshii's “Ghost in the Shell””, Science-fiction studies, vol. 26 no. 1, pp. 54-72. Accesed at http://www.jstor.org/stable/4240752 on 9 Sept 2010.

Silvio’s starting point in this paper is, yet again, Haraway’s cyborg. In Haraway’s original essay, the cyborg was at once a model for liberation, but simultaneously a potential location of new networks of domination. It is this second part which has been mostly forgotten in both theory and popular culture (again see the MCI commercial), and which Silvio wants to remind the reader of. The Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell is used as an example of a text which claims to adopt the liberatory aspects of the cyborg, but nevertheless reinforces current structures of dominance. Silvio discusses how the film undermines binary sexual difference as part of its plot, but ultimately reinforces them in order to resolve the narrative. This article is useful for understanding how cyborgs might work. It also serves as an example for the worry that science fiction, especially popular science fiction, in its need for narrative resolution, may adopt one part of the cyborg figure, but destroy the ambiguity that makes it powerful in Haraway’s work.

Science Fiction Gender and Race: A Webliography

Chosen Guiding Question Number Four: If Science Fiction is a genre that imagines our future, what happens to gender and race?

Source One: Walton, Heather, 2004 ‘The Gender of the Cyborg’ The Journal of Theology and Sexuality: The journal of the institute for the study of Christianity and Sexuality, Vol. 10, No. 2 pp.33-44.

The author explores the issues of gender, sexuality and the cyborg. At the heart of the article she seeks to question in what ways the representations of the cyborg challenge or confirm our already constructed ideals of gender identities and sexual practices. The author explores, whether the figure of the cyborg can, “offer the potential to challenge our binary and hierarchical understandings of masculinity and feminity through the radical challenge it represents to all essentialist constructions of human nature” (Walton, 2004). Walton believes that the representation of the cyborg currently circulating society today has the ability to both destabilize and reaffirm depictions of gender stereotypes. It is interesting and useful to explore her ideas on the portrayal of the female stereotype and the Cyborg, in relation to the guiding question, in the light of what Walton believes is commonly portrayed as a “feminine space”. The article explores a few examples of how the female is portrayed in science fiction cinematically, providing interesting insight to relate to the guiding question. (Walton, 2004). The article explores the issue of ‘cyborg politics’ in relation to many of Donna Haraway’s ideals. In conclusion, the article explores interesting issues relating to the place of gender, and particularly female place in the light of science fiction and it is interesting to consider her views that the cyborgs can “exaggerate and heighten, pleasurably and creatively or crudely and violently” symbolise “representations of gender circulation already in place” (Walton, 2004).

Source Two: Mitchell, Kaye, 2006 ‘Bodies that matter: Science Fiction, Techno culture and the Gendered Body’ Science Fiction studies, Vol. 33, No.1 pp.109-128.

This article examines the relationship between technology and gender as it applies to a “product of our thinking” (Mitchell 2006). It looks at how this relationship has developed over the last twenty years and looks to how it may shape the future. The author believes there is a “very real impact of technological developments upon our understanding of the gendered body” (Mitchell, 2006). However, the author also believes that any ultimate change to what we define as gendered bodies will have to be influenced at the source of where it was created, a change in thinking. Like Waltson, Mitchell believes that in some ways there is a possibility that “technology may be working to perpetuate and extend the complicated network of power relations and modes of self-regulation already in place” because it is not possible to exist in “post -gender” if “our thinking still lags behind” and “we are in thrall to old mentalities” of what it means to be gendered. (Mitchell 2006). The author explores the construction of what is meant by the term ‘body’ and thus how it can be “subject to a certain indeterminacy and contingency” as it is not a term that is fixed or “easily transcended” (Mitchell, 2006). The article addresses that the role of science fiction is certainly capable however, of allowing us to ponder on what society’s understanding of the body and the gendered body means to human society. The article expresses concerns with the body and science fiction in relation to feminism and how the female is occupied and represented through science fiction, it explores this through representations of the female in science fiction in film. In conclusion, the article explores interesting concepts of what the body and thus gender represents to society, and opens our minds to the place of gender, particularly the place of the female in the future of science fiction.

Source Three: Devoss, Danielle, 2000 ‘Rereading Cyborg Women: The Visual Rhetoric of images of Cyborg (and Cyber) Bodies on the World Wide Web CyberPsychology & Behaviour Vol. 3, No.5 pp. 835-845.

The author in this piece, believes that Donna Haraway’s ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs’ has been very influential on crossing boundaries created by society, particularly that of machine and body. The article explores how the cyborg image has been “explored at the level of the physical body” and thus lead to “cyborg identities” and an “otherness” that is not defined by gender or the physical body (Devoss, 2000). However, like both the previous authors, Devoss agrees that the cyborg body, and thus its representation of gender is existing in “excess of the real” but also intertwined “within the real”, as though it again represents gender traits that we as, society have already created. What is especially interesting is that Devoss explores the concept of race within the cyborg representation, and questions what becomes of our “notions of race and flesh” when this is complicated by the cyborg image (Devoss 2000). The article also explores the representation of the female through images found on the world wide web and how in the image of the cyborg, the female is commonly sexualised, and in this analysis argues that they are in fact “cyber bodies” asserting the norms of “femininity and female sexuality”(Devoss, 2000).

Source Four: Clough, Robyn 1997 ‘Sexed Cyborgs’ Social alternatives Vol. 16, No.1 pp. 20-24.

Clough, expresses the view that “technological innovation makes it harder for us to draw distinctions between human, animal and technology, challenging the coherence of the human body as a discrete organic unity” (Clough, 1997). The article also looks at the cyborg representation and its relationship with feminist theory. The article explores the issues if sex and gender and says that they are “oppositionally placed and are associated with nature-body and culture-mind respectively” she argues,as Mitchell did of the body that gender is a social construct (Clough, 1997). Thus, she believes the cyborg image is capable of influencing these culturally constructed traits related to gender. The article provides some information in relation to the guiding question and can be seen to correlate with many of the other author’s points on the idea of gender, and the cyborg figure of science fiction.

Source Five: Nishime, LeiLani, 2005 ‘The Mulatto Cyborg: Imagining a Multiracial Future' Cinema Journal Vol. 44, No.2 pp34-49.

The core of this article argues that “Science fiction films seem to be the perfect genre for exploring mixed-race representations and subjectivity” and that the Cyborg itself offers a safe realm in which to explore “the controversial issues surrounding multiracial identity” (Nishime, 2005). The author believes that the world portrayed in science fiction cinema is a way of camouflaging real racial tensions felt by society. The author analyses the different representations of the cyborg figure that appear in Science fiction film genre and explores different narratives of the Science Fiction film and provides insight into what Science Fiction film might be portraying about racial constructs.

Webliography

Haraway’s Manifesto is a political text generated from socialist feminism of the 1980s. In what ways have feminists taken up her radical ideas since then?

The following articles all share a common electric current, charged by the Cyborg Manifesto from Donna Haraway. The Cyborg is a powerful metaphor for the disruption of the constructed dichotomies of the natural and the artificial, sex and gender, the human and society. All of the articles share this current, although in varying degrees and ways for unique and contrasting arguments. The range of topics include: women and technology, sex, Transhumanism, the body and the state, and online publications.

Elizabeth Lane Lawley, “Computers and Communication of Gender” Internet Training and Consulting Services (April 1993) (accessed 3 September 2010)

This earlier article of the nineties, arguably before the internet became the incredible phenomena of the later nineties, examines communication technologies from a ‘woman-centred’ vantage point; in order to analyse the ways in which the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are used in this new space of communication. New theoretical perspectives on shifting boundaries of gender definitions to challenge the determinist view of the effect of technology on society and of technology on women. This article can be compared and contrasted to the later articles published in the late nineteen-nineties and in the naughties, as it is right at the beginning of the internet. We can see that many terms we see in the later periods are not used and that Lawley herself is still quite uncertain about what the effect the new forms communication will have, although she takes a position of the disruptive potential of the internet on boundaries, such as gender and fantasy and reality. The article is much closer in time to Haraway’s Manifesto and it uses its ideas of technology’s potential to disrupt boundaries.

Krista Scott, “Girls Need Modems! Cyber Culture and Feminist Ezines” Feministzine (January 1998) (accessed 31 August 2010)

The article is a hybrid of cultural, feminist, political and literary theory to examine the relationship between the net and online publication. Also interested in the developing theory of gender and the internet in this period (1998), Scott says ‘I am concerned with the slightly more abstract relationship which these elements have with the culture in which Ezines operate, and how current theories of cyberspace intersect with what verbal/textual and visual/iconographical content is present in the Ezines.’. The article plays upon Haraway’s theories of the Cyborg to provide a feminist analysis of the internet and technology. Scott published her Masters Thesis online so that it could be a part of a feminist community. The lengthy scholarly article provides a detailed feminist analysis of the internet and of its relationship to gender, with its focus of Ezines publications. The article is an example of how the radical ideas of Haraway’s Manifesto are used in scholarly feminist analysis of technologies such as the internet and online publication. The metaphor of the Cyborg is a powerful image.

Krista Scott, “Imagined Bodies, Imagined Communities” Feministzine (1999) (accessed 3 September 2010)

The article analyses the use of the body as a metaphor for the state. The body, particularly the female body, is influenced by the affairs of the state. The relationship between the female body and its autonomy with the nation and politics, as the paradigm is the male body as the political. The article draws on feminist theories of the female body and of post-colonialism. The Cyborg and Haraway’s Manifesto are utilised in order to present a possible outcome of the deconstruction and destruction of female body and the control of it, through the deconstruction of the dichotomy of the natural and artificial, nature and civilisation. Although it seems at times to be an idealistic article of utopian dream. The subject of the article is the Cyborg. The Cyborg is an introduction of theory, methodology and experience into new kinds of imagined bodies and communities. It takes on a very de-constructionist position. In relation to the question, it presents us with another form of how Haraway’s Manifesto has been used since its publication-the politics of the body and of imagined communities, such as nations.

Kyle Munkittrick, “On the Importance of Being a Cyborg Feminist”
hplusmagazine (July 2009) (accessed 31 August 2010)

Examines the link between Cyber-feminism and Transhumanism. In the modern world Transhumanism needs Cyber-feminism in order to achieve social and political change. They share political ambition of challenging the sex/gender system, deconstructing the constructs of what ‘natural’ is in relation to sex and body, and ‘the process of technological development, design, and engineering is influenced by society and culture and, thus, in part by normative forces such as patriarchy’. Munkittrick uses Haraway’s Manifesto as the basis for his article on Transhumanism and feminism, however it does not contain little critical analysis of the Manifesto itself, nor does he propose what some alternative arguments may be. Although this article is an example of what some feminists are doing since Haraway’s Manifesto, Transhumanism, but it is limited as it does not utilise the multitude of critical analysis on the political theory. It presents a descriptive, albeit a useful summary of Transhumanism and Cyborg-feminism, but a weak argument and analysis of little substance.

Nina Lykke, “Are Cyborgs Queer?” Orlando (September 2000) (accessed 3 September 2010)

Nina Lykke positions herself as the feminist appropriation of Haraway’s Cyborg figure, to erode the foundations of biological determinism in relation to the sex/gender system. It argues against biological determinism and its naturalisation of the links between biological sex, sexuality, reproductive capacities, gendered subjectivity and hierarchal systems. The two prominent figures used are that of ‘the Cyborg’ and ‘the Queer’. Some of the major subjects include sexuality and the effects of new reproductive technologies and the de-sexualisation of reproduction. The article examines several key theories to the critique of biological determinism, including Haraway and Judith Butler, comparing and contrasting such theories in order to sustain her argument. Although published in 2000, the scholarly article by Dr. Nina Lykke of the University of Linköping presents one form of contemporary feminists using Haraway’s Manifesto: to challenge and disrupt biological determinism.

"I want to be a machine" Andy Warhol

If popular culture has taken up the cyborg as a figure of progress, what happens to the way race is represented?

As Science Fiction is a precursor for defining the post-human, most of my research is based on Cyborgs in Science fiction because I believe it offers us an interesting way of considering the future of topical issues like race.

Isiah, Lavender III (2004) ‘Technicity: AI and Cyborg Ethnicity in The Matrix’, Extrapolation, Academic Research Library, Vol. 45, No.4, p.p. 437-458, (Accessed 6 September 2010)

Determining what happens to ethnicity in the post-human is Isiah’s main objective, he turns to the film The Matrix, that installs a belief that there can’t be a future without race and discrimination, to examine the way ethnicity and race is depicted in the future, and argues that with post-humanity comes a post-ethnicity. He creates a new term for this post-ethnicity and calls it “technicity”, a technological constructed ethnicity. He finds this new ethnicity very apparent in The Matrix in the form of the discrimination and annihilation of the Cyborgs by the AI. He establishes that The Matrix creates a “new paradigm of supremacy and discrimination” (p.p. 440). His focus is to make us question our preconceptions “of the old and new ethnicities” (p.p. 439) and challenges our accepted categories of difference (p.p. 440). Although The Matrix does show how race is changed through technology he also explains that our stereotypical view of race is still very apparent, within the movie through “naming, the prophecy and visual coding” (p.p. 440). This article densely suggests and depicts the possible evolution of race with technology and gives us a good indication of how our future might be.

Kirby, David A (2004), ‘Extrapolating Race in GATTACA: Genetic Passing, Identity, and the Science of Race’, Literature and Medicine, Vol. 23, No.1, p.p.184-200, (Accessed 4 September 2010)

The “biological based dystopian narrative” (p.p. 185) Gattaca depicts a future based on genetic discrimination and thus a new type of racism; genoism. The film shows how this new racism has created a social division and new hierarchy based on those who have been genetically altered, the privileged and those who have been unaltered, the oppressed. Although Gattaca displays an interesting alternative to racial and ethnic discrimination, Kirby argues that the film portrays a “racial blindness” (p.p. 191) and ignores contemporary issues of race. This is made evident when the oppressed groupe is only constituted of white males, which in today’s society is the dominant group. The genetic discrimination in Gattaca is comparable to the treatment of minorities in the US today; they experience similar difficulties and their identity is defined by their difference. Kirby refers to Bernadi’s statement that one cannot overlook the past and present issues of race when thinking about the future (p.p. 186), and that the utopian multicultural vision (p.p. 110) created in Gattaca is not representative or realistic. With progression arise new difficulties and divisions especially in terms of contemporary issues like gender and race, but this article reminds us that racial discrimination is and will most definitely always be an issue.

Nishime, LeiLani (2005), ‘The Mulatto Cyborg: Imagining a Multiracial Future’, Cinema Journal, Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 34-49, (accessed 7 September 2010).

This article defines three different types of Cyborgs found in Science Fiction movies, the most interesting one of them being, the Mulatto Cyborg. Depicted as a Cyborg that is “neither one nor the other” (p.p. 45) he does not strive to be human nor defines himself as a machine, rather he deals and embraces his hybridity, and breaks down the boundaries of the “organic and inorganic” (p.p. 45). Leilani suggests that the Mulatto Cyborg is a technological parallel and allegory for the way we perceive mixed-race people, a combination of both human and machine without a defined singular identity. “For much of the modern era, mixed-race people were the living embodiment of crossed boundaries” (p.p. 35) very much like the Cyborg is today. The Mulatto Cyborg is found in the Science Fiction film RoboCop, as Murphy “is barred from passing as human and re-fuses to pass as machine” (p.p. 46) he is the creation of a new type of “race” through the progression of technology. Leilani stresses the importance that Science fiction and Cyborg films offer us in questioning and imagining difference, especially racially.

Silvio, Carl (1999), ‘Refiguring the Radical Cyborg in Mamoru Oshii's "Ghost in the Shell"’, Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1, p.p. 54-72, (Accessed on 7 September 2010)

Silvio defines the Cyborg as a means to “dismantle the binaries and categorical ways of thinking that have characterized the history of Western culture” (p.p. 54) and in that sense break down the division and discrimination caused by race in our current society. He argues that the idea that the Internet and other forms of technologies, create a utopian and idealistic space where issues like race, gender and identity are no longer factors that contribute to discrimination and that “it brings us closer to a world free of inequity” (p.p. 54) breeds potential for a new cultural domination and supremacy based on who has access to those technologies and who does not. Silvio exemplifies how the Japanese Anime Ghost in the Shell challenges the stereotypical depiction of white men as action and cyberspace heroes (p.p. 57) as the main protagonist of the narrative is an Asian Cyborg woman. Not only is she the hero but she is also characterized as the dominant and more prevailing figure, as she is more mechanically constructed than her male partner. This reinforces the previous idea of a possible discrimination of supremacy based on technological access, an issue that arises with progress some are left behind.

Wilkerson, Abby (1997), ‘Ending at the Skin: Sexuality and Race in Feminist Theorizing’, Third Wave Feminisms Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 164-173, (Accessed 4 September 2010)

In this reading Wilkerson challenges and examines Haraway’s presentation of sexuality and race in her Cyborg theory, arguing that her analysis of these issues are to some extent avoided and deceptive. She stands from a bisexual feminist perspective and embraces the Cyborg “myth” as a boundary crosser and because it “challenges the familiar values that marginalize and restrict various social groups” (p.p. 164). However she does make the observation that Cyborgs can be seen as an evasion of race, of whiteness and of power by not having a defined identity (p.p. 170), and by forgetting about the issue itself and assuming it just blurs into ones social context. This evasion of race can become “an obstacle in recognizing and dismantling racism and white privilege (p.p.169) as it reminds us that human agency exists. This article gives us a good indication of how Haraway’s Cyborg is still a figure of progress and how social issues like race are still trying to be explored through the post-human.