Cyborg Feminism

Science fiction is a genre in which anything is possible. It therefore comprises the perfect litmus test of any given culture’s prevailing hopes and fears about the future. One such source of anxiety that has been particularly conspicuous in works of fiction since the Industrial Revolution is the development of automata and other machines – specifically, whether they might eventually become strong or intelligent enough to overthrow their creators. As I will try to elucidate in this essay, fears about some sort of robot uprising fit into a more general worry among dominant groups about a reversal of fates between them and an oppressed group. The cyborg character, however, complicates this formula because it is a hybrid of human and machine, a boundary figure. This is a clear, perhaps uncomfortable reminder that the Other is also the Same.
In this thesis, I will be looking at five key examples from the last five decades of literature about cyborgs, namely: The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey; ‘The Girl Who Was Plugged In’ by James Tiptree Jr.; Proxies by Laura J Mixon; ‘Silently and Very Fast’ by Catherynne M Valente; and Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Though these texts I will seek out ways in which cyborgs might disrupt binary understandings of identity and thereby challenge real-life social hierarchies. Most important to this investigation is the potential of cyborg disembodiment – that is, any kind of cybernetic separation of the consciousness from an organic body – to confuse how identities are perceived and constructed.

This paper examines a variety of cyborg figures in science fiction and art, and investigates how these posthuman subject’s perceptual capacities are altered through their “cyborging,” how this might lead to greater intersubjective understanding and empathy, and advocates an embodied phenomenology for these figures. The cyborg and the posthuman are not necessarily synonymous but share similar political and ethical goals in theory: to radically redefine the human and the humanities, in order to see a way to better intersubjective and interspecies relations.
Ghost in The Shell, Anne McCaffrey, Neil Harbisson.

This essay gives a situated introduction to body hacking, an underground surgical process that seeks to transform the body’s architecture, offering an ethnographic account of the affects that drive this corporeal intervention for performance artist Cheto Castellano, and later, for the author. A brief history of recent body modification movements is offered. Through these situated stories of corporeal transformation there is an exploration of Eva Hayward’s concept of transbecoming, exploring the perpetual change of the body in transition, particularly in relation to posthumanistic transformations. The article closes with a speculative cyborg feminist body modification project titled 10,000 Generations Later, which explores how a subdermal archive of silicone implants stored under the author’s skin may assist her in a posthumanist transbecoming after the death of her companions species toy poodle Luk Kahlo, and perhaps even in a distant future. The author argues that this project becomes an apparatus of mestizaje between speculative cyborg feminism and significant otherness.

The primary objective of the paper is to construe the post-humanist electronic age and its ramifications in terms of religious, biological, social and economic aspects of human society. These effects eventually affect the cultural core of any human society. The rapid rate of transit brought forth by the technological revolutions would leave the world entangled in its electronic chords and the humans disentangled from their emotional selves. The cybernetic organisms-'cyborgs' will infest the world resulting in racial extinction. Technology is intended to enhance human lives in spheres. Gadgets from being facilitators have metamorphosed into cyborgs marking the end of mankind. Growing needs of sedentary lifestyle coupled with contrived innovations of the AI (Artificial Intelligence) scientists like robots and gadgets which could work beyond any human can imagine has resulted in a 'Power Shift'. The humans have started to play second fiddle to robots. Sherry Turkle's Alone Together has documented the effect of technological advancements on human of all section and age group.

In this paper I will offer an analysis of cyber technology, cyberspace and cyborg from its appearance in fiction to its contemporary realizations, in order to show symbolic place of cyborg has changed, in the light of contemporary power relations. I will focus on the cyborg figure in literature and film, mainly the cyberpunk genre characteristic for fictionalization of the relations between individual, society and technology.

In a cyborg society where people exist both organically and via technology, sexual expression and interaction via technology has become 'normal'. The controversy surrounding sexting stems from contemporary literature and media portraying it as coercive, harmful and unacceptable, with particular reference to young females. Qualitative data on this phenomenon is extremely limited and biased, potentially resulting in unjust limitations and restrictions. This study investigates Millennial sexting behaviour by considering general and gendered perceptions of sexting to better understand the phenomenon; its risks, benefits, and the practice itself. An exploratory mixed methods study amongst university students (N = 579) revealed expected and unexpected findings. Respondents acknowledged sexting's risks, while the benefits of and motivations for sexting were emphasised with little evidence of negative pressure. It is argued that the benefits of sexting greatly outweigh the potential risks, but moreover, that sexting is a primarily feminist practice that holds much promise. The need for sextual education and awareness of sext-consent is examined, as theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

Resumen Este artículo parte del análisis de dos obras, una filosófica y otra cinematográfica, de Donna Haraway y Kōbō Abe respectivamente. A partir de éstas, se propone una reflexión sobre los conceptos de cyborg y máscara que se utilizan en dichas obras. Se defenderá una vinculación de dichos conceptos, vinculación que es tanto estética como ética y ontológica, ya que permite reflexionar acerca de los límites de lo femenino y lo humano. Abstract This article starts from the analysis of two works, one philosophical and the other cinematographic, Donna Haraway's and Kōbō Abe's, respectively. Based on these two works, a reflection on the concepts of cyborg and mask that appear in them will be proposed. A union between these concepts will be defended, as an aesthetical, ethical, and ontological union, because it allows a reflection on the limits of femininity and humanity.

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Los videojuegos son actualmente la primera industria del entretenimiento por delante del cine o la música y, como tal, se han convertido en un nuevo lenguaje de poderosa influencia a través del cual se configura la realidad pero que también, y por esta misma razón, puede ser usado para construir nuevas realidades.



Pretendemos llevar a cabo un análisis de este medio tal y como está siendo usado en la actualidad, así como de sus limitaciones y potencialidades. Con ello, trataremos de indagar en las posibilidades de reapropiación de esta herramienta que consideramos que pueden constituir un importante laboratorio de experimentación de la identidad y que incluso podría suponer un espacio de experimentación de la sexualidad que no fuese una mera reproducción de estereotipos.
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Sarea ekintza eremu berria bihurtu da azken urteotan eta aldaketa sozial, kultural, ekonomiko, legal eta politikorako aukerak sortu ditu (Mimenza, 2014: 16). Teknologien eskuragarritasunak elkarren artean konektatutako pertsona taldeak sortu ditu, momentu jakinetan “legio” aktibista bihurtu daitezkeelarik. Era berean, tresna berriak eskuragarri izateak balio eta dinamiketan aldaketak sortu ditu mugimendu sozialetan. Izan ere, teknologia ez da tresna bat bakarrik, medio bat da (Tascón eta Quintana, 2012: 112). Bart Cammaerts-ek (2013) azpimarratzen duen moduan, sareak, aktibistak euren artean komunikatzeko aukerak hobetu ditu, diskurtso alternatiboak zabaltzetik harago, identitate kolektiboen eraikuntzan lagunduz, offline-online sareak sortuz eta bertan garatutako protestak erraztuz.

Gaur egun sarean ez dagoena ez da existitzen. Sarea politika forma berrientzako eredu egokia bihurtu da (G. Rovira Sancho, 2012: 92). Pertsonala politikoa dela aditzera eman zuten Carol Hanisch-ek The Personal is Political (1969) saiakeran eta Kate Millet-ek Sexual Politics (1969) saiakeran, gerora Feminismo Erradikalak bere egin eta lelo bihurtuko zuena. Remedios Zafrak (2005: 316) aipatu bezala, pribatua dena publikatzen ez bada, hau da, publiko egiten ez bada, ikustezin bihurtuko da, munduari dagokionez deuseztatua, ezabatua.

In 2004, Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk (b. 1965) released her fifth solo album Medúlla, made almost exclusively with human voices. After outlining what I have termed ‘the elastic self’, which recognises both personal and external agency, this dissertation first examines how Björk uses technologies of the studio, using Actor Network Theory. Often mechanical manipulation is an attempt to depict powerlessness, whilst her employment of beatboxers’ interplay with technology is to express the body. . I will explore how Björk conceptualised and conceived Medúlla (2004), an album made almost entirely from human voicesI then perform an organicist motivic analysis of the album, studying motives used in different songs and links made across the musical foreground and background and the resulting unity. Through the concept of the rhizome and Actor Network Theory, I expand my analysis of motivic unity outside of the album, suggesting that the album can also be read as a network or as ‘elastic’. This study will attempt to understand how Björk’s idea of the self and body were transferred to the musical work.

Drawing on feminist theory, this paper uses a feminist lens to analyze the gendered representations and discourses of artificial intelligence in cinema history. In particular, this paper conducts an in-depth analysis of the representations of female robots and AI in Spike Jonze’s Her (2013) and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2013).

This paper received First Class Honors at Trinity College, Dublin.
Vanessa graduated with Distinction in B.A. English Literature and Media Studies.

In this short essay I will explore whether Donna Haraway's image of the cyborg fits into Ridley Scott's vision of the future as seen in the 1982 science fiction film Blade Runner. I will argue that both affirmative and negative answers can be concluded, and I will support my arguments by pointing out the similarities and discrepancies between Haraway's conception of the cyborg in A Cyborg Manifesto and the replicants in Scott's Blade Runner.

This paper examines the idea of memory being a dangerous weapon through the genre of sci-fi, specifically as the basis of a collective history for artificial life forms which poses a danger to the state, as I examine three shows: Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, and the HBO series Westworld. Furthermore, the affect of traumatic memories in artificial life parallels the ways that the state deals with post-traumatic stress (PTS) in soldiers; in this revelation I examine parallels to veteran testimonies of military atrocities. Overall, three things arise within these stories: 1) Memory is dangerous to the state; 2) The state attempts to manage and control memory; and 3) Memory can be liberatory, as it is an act of resistance.

Kenyan-born, now based in New York, contemporary artist Wangechi Mutu cuts, pastes and draws onto the collaged and photomontaged bodies of her subjects, to reveal the racialized, gendered identities that have been projected onto female bodies in western visual culture (Fletcher, 2014:181; Hernandez, 2017:427). As Mutu (2007) acknowledges, “[the female] body has been a central part of my work… a relentless, mutating pivot on which almost all my ideas are placed and gravitate”. By using collaged images, from fashion, ethnographic, travel, leisure and other magazine publications, the artist constructs a variety of new fragmented figurations for female bodies and identities (Willis, 2014). These artworks dissolve the dichotomies of female subjectivity, presenting an opportunity to address the complexities of (female) identity, gender, sexuality and race by exploring female characters and how they have been stereotyped in western culture (Smith, 2009:1).

Collage and photomontage as aesthetic strategies are used by both modern and contemporary artists to create alternative representations of bodies, identities and personas, but Mutu’s subjects have been likened to visual metaphors of Donna Haraway’s (1991:149-181) cyborgs (Smith, 2009:69). In A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, Haraway (1991:155) introduces the cyborg as a socio-political idea, tool and myth for (re)thinking difference and body politics, whilst addressing stereotypes and gender assumptions placed on bodies. According to Theodora Danylevich (2008:101), the metaphor of the cyborg constitutes a critical heuristic device for feminist politics and political articulation because it engages with “a vast diversity of subjective specificity of experiences among [people] around the world”. Thus, the cyborg operates a political approach and an imagined understanding that people have multiple, fractured identities rather than singular identities (Haraway, 1991:157). Mutu’s female characters, or feminist cyborgs, can be said to embody Haraway’s (1991:181) ideas; through the various and fragmentary views and bodies used to compose the artist’s collages, they present diverse perspectives of seeing female bodies (Fletcher, 2014:196; Smith, 2009: 69).

The intention of this assignment is to explore how Mutu’s female subjects can be seen as the visual metaphors and translations of Haraway’s (1991:149-181) socio-political myth of the cyborg. Initially, the assignment will briefly contextualise Donna Haraway’s (1991:149-181) delineation of the cyborg creature. Secondly, the text aims to place the artist’s work and art practice within feminist discourses on the use of collage as an artistic and aesthetic strategy, offering insight into how collage might be suitable aesthetic practices for artists when visualising, imagining and framing the concept of the cyborg within contemporary art. Finally, it will investigate how Wangechi Mutu’s subjects serve as visualised feminist cyborgs, by tracing several feminist readings on cyborgs, taking cognisance of revisionist and oppositional critiques of the cyborg, and how they might exist in a cyborgian space or ‘world’.

Michel Weber, Féminisme épidermique et utopie viscérale. Signes, symboles, et archétypes, Louvain-la-Neuve, Éditions Chromatika, 2020 ; ISBN 978-2-930517-72-8, ISBN E-book 978-2-930517-73-5

Comment repenser la sexualité et le « genre » ?
Relire la Genèse et le Prologue de l’évangile de Jean à partir de prémisses féministes donne une idée très vive de la chape idéologique et conceptuelle qui a été coulée sur l’inconscient collectif par les monothéismes, finalement assistés par les catégories philosophiques platoniciennes.
Revisiter le féminisme contemporain à la lumière du sens commun et de la perspective jungienne sur le processus d’individuation permet alors d’en relativiser efficacement les enjeux.

Michel Weber est professeur adjoint de philosophie à l’Université du Saskatchewan (Canada). Il pratique également la thérapie psychocorporelle ayurvédique (Cabinet Metabyanga) et le coaching existentiel (Centre Tonaki).


Les libraires peuvent s’adresser à <libraire@ciaco.com> pour obtenir une réduction confraternelle.

Michel Weber, Féminisme épidermique et utopie viscérale. Signes, symboles, et archétypes, Louvain-la-Neuve, Éditions Chromatika, 2020 ; ISBN 978-2-930517-72-8, ISBN E-book 978-2-930517-73-5

Comment repenser la sexualité et le « genre » ?
Relire la Genèse et le Prologue de l’évangile de Jean à partir de prémisses féministes donne une idée très vive de la chape idéologique et conceptuelle qui a été coulée sur l’inconscient collectif par les monothéismes, finalement assistés par les catégories philosophiques platoniciennes.
Revisiter le féminisme contemporain à la lumière du sens commun et de la perspective jungienne sur le processus d’individuation permet alors d’en relativiser efficacement les enjeux.

Michel Weber est professeur adjoint de philosophie à l’Université du Saskatchewan (Canada). Il pratique également la thérapie psychocorporelle ayurvédique (Cabinet Metabyanga) et le coaching existentiel (Centre Tonaki).


Les libraires peuvent s’adresser à <libraire@ciaco.com> pour obtenir une réduction confraternelle.

The 21st Century has ushered in a redefinition of the body by cybernetic and biotechnological developments. The concept of “human” has been broadly challenged, while “posthuman” and “transhuman” have become terms of philosophical and scientific enquiry. Are these scenarios inducing a paradigm shift in the ontological and epistemological perception of the human body? If so, will gender, race, age and class among others, represent significant categories of reformulation? More radically, from a futuristic perspective: will posthumans need any embodiment at all? Posthumanism and Transhumanism offer different answers to these questions.

Texto não publicado.

Este texto apresenta um caminho de pensamento palpitante, com intuições e propostas que possam nos fazer pensar os impasses políticos e sociais tão complexos que estamos vivendo. O ponto de partida está em entender como a discussão sobre o ciborgue pode ampliar nosso modo de encarar o corpo e a política, neste início de século XXI. O texto se desenvolve com as reflexões de P. B. Preciado sobre as novas biotecnologias, as transformações neoliberais e as experiências transidentitárias. O objetivo é pensar a abertura de horizontes políticos e as condições de possibilidade de revoluções do corpo político.

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to challenge the reader to follow what we have termed a throbbing line of thought, one whose intuitions and proposals might lead us to rethink the highly complex political and social impasses we are currently subjected to. The starting point for said process lies in understanding how discussions concerning cyborgs can expand our way of looking at the body and at politics in this, the early part of the twenty-first century. The development of the text follows P. B. Preciado's reflections on biotechnologies, neoliberal transformations, and transidentitarian experiences. Ultimately, our intention is to reflect on the potential expansion and multiplication of political horizons, as well as on the conditions that would allow the political body to be revolutionized.

En este trabajo se presenta un camino de pensamiento palpitante, hecho de intuiciones y propuestas que puedan nos hacer crear salidas políticas y sociales de los complejos desafíos que estamos viviendo. El punto de partida es entender cómo la discusión sobre el cyborg puede ampliar nuestra manera de mirar el cuerpo y la política en este principio del siglo XXI. El texto desarrolla las reflexiones de Pablo Beatriz Preciado sobre las biotecnologías, las transformaciones neoliberales y experiencias transidentitárias. El objetivo es pensar la apertura de horizontes políticos y las condiciones de posibilidad de revoluciones del cuerpo político.

O presente trabalho gira em torno da apresentação e reflexão sobre um certo número de discursos, práticas e representações que relacionam corpo e tecnologia nos filmes de ficção científica Gattaca e Equilibrium. Para tentar deixar mais nítidas as relações e entrecruzamentos que podem ser estabelecidos entre os enredos fílmicos e debates contemporâneos sobre o corpo, questiono que representações e discursos sobre o corpo e humanidade são apresentadas em Gattaca e Equilibrium. Para refletir sobre isso, buscarei compreender uma divisão posta nos filmes, entre o que é tomado como natural e o que é tomado como artificial/implantado nos seres humanos dessas películas, além de identificar quais aspectos são considerados necessários à condição humana e que valores são atribuídos a eles nos filmes analisados. O tema se deve ao lugar ocupado pelo corpo como lócus de significação de uma determinada sociedade: ao observar o tratamento dado ao corpo e os valores que o diferenciam, é possível descobrir muito sobre os modos de existência que concernem tais pessoas, bem como sobre diferenças estruturais socioculturais existentes. A seleção dos filmes a serem analisados segue o critério de estes abordarem temáticas referentes à tecnologia, à corporalidade e à transformação do corpo para superação de limites físicos impostos. Sendo a inteligibilidade da veiculação de ideias e de representações partilhadas pelo cinema fruto de seu pertencimento a um determinado contexto sociocultural – tanto como produtor como produto desta –, sua utilização como ferramenta de análise social e de reflexão sobre as representações de corpo é enriquecedora e, desta maneira, a metodologia de pesquisa será a análise etnográfica dos filmes. Algumas das categorias de análise a serem utilizadas fazem referência às dinâmicas relacionais e à conexão destas com determinados comportamentos e consequências sociais que estão no filme.

This thesis examines the embodiment of the sexed body and the struggle of fitting into the narrow frames of what a woman is supposed to behave and look like in Japanese cinema. Using the medium of film, I, therefore, seek to produce knowledge regarding the internalized gaze of the oppressor, and self-objectification, caused by the capitalist heteropatriarchy. Thus, I am drawing from cyborg feminism, and the second wave of sexual difference theory's concept of becoming, expanded upon by the Italian-Australian philosopher Rosi Braidotti. I further use the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's notion of masculine domination and the American philosopher Gayle Rubin's charmed circle, in creating a theoretical framework, and using the methods of cultural and feminist film analysis to contextualize the films and locate the subjectification of the women. The movies that I will be analyzing are the Japanese director and poet Sion Sono's Antiporno (アンチポルノ,2016) and the Japanese director and photographer Mika Ninagawa's Helter Skelter (ヘルタースケルター,2012), which both center around two women and their struggle in becoming-cyborg, in relation to power, trauma, sexuality, technology, and beauty ideals in 'modernized' Japan. In that sense, I will study the phenomenon of operating outside the lines of social norms of femininity and desire.

At the intersection of social robotics and sex technology, sex robots occupy a unique position within both fields. Sex robots are the only domestic robot where there is a financial incentive to make the robot as life-like as possible, while few other sex devices inspire true scorn and ethical debate. Today's sex robots are rudimentary, they are not nimble, nor can they walk on their own. The “AI personalities" sex robots are outfitted with are akin to smutty versions of the personal assistants found in most smart phones. However, looking twenty, thirty, years down the line, things could shift dramatically for this technology. There is already literature suggesting alternative applications for sex robots, within the fields of healthcare and therapy. Yet there are no clear standards or oversight when it comes to security, privacy, and responsibility within the sex tech industry. In addition, there are campaigns to ban this technology altogether. These factors convene to create an atmosphere of uncertainty surrounding the future of this emerging technology. This paper aims to provide useful insight into a variety of possible outcomes for sex robot technology, by applying the Futures Studies method of scenarios. Four scenarios were created using the Four Archetypes, also known as the Manoa Method, as developed by Jim Dator. These scenarios were informed by primary data collected via interviews and reinforced with existing secondary data from published academic literature.The four scenarios are: Continued Growth - focused on money, growth and capitalism, many job opportunities are created, as are the risks for exploitation; Discipline - a security-minded society and regulatory environment, where sex robots are clinical tools for providing sexual therapies; Collapse - a future where sex robot technology has been globally prohibited, and back-casts events leading up to this ban; Transformation – a community- oriented society open in sexual attitudes, which recognizes the holistic importance of sexual wellbeing over fleeting sexual needs and momentary gratification. Furthermore, a consumer study was done that reveals insight to the needs of potential sex robot owners and disabled users. These scenarios will be useful for manufacturers, policy makers, consumers, researchers, and even those who campaign against sex robots.

Published in: Ranisch, R. & Sorgner, S. L. (2014) Post- and Transhumanism: An Introduction. S.L. Peter Lang Publisher. Pages: 213-226 Abstract: The 21st Century has ushered in a redefinition of the body by cybernetic and biotechnological developments. The concept of “human” has been broadly challenged, while “posthuman” and “transhuman” have become terms of philosophical and scientific enquiry. Are these scenarios inducing a paradigm shift in the ontological and epistemological perception of the human body? If so, will gender, race, age and class among others, represent significant categories of reformulation? More radically, from a futuristic perspective: will posthumans need any embodiment at all? Posthumanism and Transhumanism offer different answers to these questions.

It has been said that in this technologically inundated era, we are all cyborgs. Such a radical redefinition of the human being is but one manifested example of how the category ‘human’ and its multifaceted sub-categories have undergone a long process of re-conceptualisation under postmodernism. This paper explores how the concept of ‘the posthuman’ allows for human kind to expand its abilities, its perception and its understanding of our world, as seen through the work of various artists articulating these ideas.

This essay explores how, for many minoritized peoples, cyborg ontology is experienced as dehumanizing rather than posthumanizing. Rereading Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto through a decolonial, transfeminist lens, it explores the implications of Haraway’s assertion that cyborg subjectivity is the “illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism” by examining the modern/colonial development and deployment of microprosthetic hormonal technologies – so often heralded as one of the technologies ushering in a queer, posthuman, post-gender future – as mechanisms of gendered and racialized subjective control operative at the level of the biomolecular.

This paper suggests a convenience of artistic approach to scientific research, while attempting to embody a theoretical concept of posthuman within the performance art practice. First part of the text discusses the onset and development of posthumanism as a philosophical and cultural movement focused on gradual man – machine convergence, the following part then presents its reflection within the work of selected performance artists. Posthumanism is conceived as a movement on the border between serious scientific discourse and fiction: Based on the mathematical theory of communication as well as the legacy of cyberpunk dystopia, it offers a vision of transition from human to the so-called posthuman. The posthuman is seen as an offspring of technoculture, a synthesis of living and artificial, and a loosely evolving entity without fixed ontological boundaries. Processual existence of posthuman is located beyond any dualistic categorizations and refuses essentialist approach. It is an attractive subject of science-fiction stories and a sexy postmodern slogan, as well as a symbol of transgression of predestinating categories such as race, gender or social status. However, posthuman is primarily a metaphor adopted by variety of narratives focused on potential aspects of technologically extended life: From serious scientific investigations, through science-fiction, up to its appropriations by the art world. The inherently open and independent language of art seems to represent a suitable interpretational tool for articulating the posthuman discourse, while transferring the theoretical concept of posthuman into a vivid and tangible form.

Εργασία εξαμήνου στα πλαίσια του μαθήματος Κοινωνιολογία του Πολιτισμού (ΠΜΣ Πολιτιστική Διαχείριση, Πάντειο).
Η εργασία κινείται σε τρεις κύριους άξονες: το Cyborg Manifesto της Donna Haraway, τις εφαρμογές για το Cyborg (κυβερνοχώρος, κυβερνοφεμινισμός), διάφορες εφαρμογές κυβερνοφεμινισμού και τέλος, τη σύνδεση Flâneur- Flâneuse- Cyberflâneuse.

Donna Haraway’s (1991) vision of a post-gender cyborg has (re)sparked feminist interest in reclaiming patriarchal technological tools as a source of liberation from gender oppression. These utopian, cyborgian dreams of the dissolution of body and gender dualisms however, are flawed. This failing is founded on Haraway’s underestimation of the gender-influenced relationship between: the historical legacies of the cyborg; linguistic metaphors and symbols; and the lived subjective technological experiences of embodied materiality. Consequently, despite Haraway’s fantastical claims of the cyborg being able to transgress traditional hierarchical bodily-based binaries, this cyborg vision is distinctly modern in a nostalgic, linear, and utopian construction. As a result, these idealistic cyborg visions can be linked paradoxically to patriarchal discourses; the Cartesian philosophies of Christian religion; and the posthuman prophetical desires of the Extropian transhuman collective (Extropy Institute, 2003a, 2003b; More, 2003), such as featured in the works of Hans Moravec (1988) and Kevin Warwick (2002).

Bill Readings in “Pagans, Perverts or Primitives? Experimental Justice in the Empire of Capital” has aptly said: ‘The claim of universal humanity inherent in the republican ‘we’ underpins the apparent paradox that a nation like the United States, dedicated to the inalienable rights of man, should be hostage to racism, sexism and homophobia, with a long history of genocide waged against Native Americans’ (117). The posthumanistic turn in the last few decades has compelled the theorists like Katherine Hayles, Haraway and others to search for a world that is free from patriarchal bias and gender hierarchies. The world of cyborgs deconstructs the boundaries hitherto assigned to man and machines. The flesh and metal amalgamation anticipates a sexless future and at the same time the extinction of gender discrimination. My proposed paper will venture to explore the politics of cyborg myth and technofeminism with special reference to Glass Houses by Laura J. Mixon.

Quels liens peut-on tracer entre la construction du corps cyborg et la construction du féminin au cinéma? Au contact des films d’animation de science-fiction Ghost in the Shell et Ghost in the Shell 2 : Innocence du réalisateur japonais Mamoru Oshii, ce mémoire cherche à éclairer les fonctionnements de ces constructions, mais aussi à identifier les mécanismes du désir associé au corps artificiel et au corps féminin. Que reste-t-il du désir et de l’identité à l’époque de leur reproductibilité technique ?

Par des emprunts allant de L’Ève future du romancier Villiers de l’Isle-Adam aux créations érotiquement inquiétantes de l’artiste surréaliste allemand Hans Bellmer, ces films mettent en scène une construction du désir qui problématise la représentation du féminin dans le cinéma d’animation japonais contemporain, en abordant notamment l’invisibilité des sexes dans les animé ainsi qu’en critiquant l’érotisation accrue des corps d’enfants par le complexe de Lolita.

This article analyses the conceptions of identity in contemporary times by delving into art practices from the 1970s onwards that deal with topics such as the construction of the self, identity as simulacrum, gender as masquerade, cyberfeminism, the cyborg, the techno-medical body or online identity fluidity. In the information and digital era, new technological, medical and scientific developments like genetic engineering, biotechnology, surgical and hormonal procedures and the Internet permeate our lives, affecting the perception, representation and understanding of the self. Through the analysis of the work of Lynn Hershman Leeson, ORLAN and Francesca da Rimini, this article examines contemporary art practices that reflect on these current issues, mirroring contemporary changes, subverting homogenising and repressive articulations of identity, and considering the new malleability, reproducibility and plurality of the self. These art practices ultimately represent the merging of human and machine, of original and copy, of natural and artificial, of the corporeal and the virtual.

In this paper, my aim is to show some of the problems that the figure of the cyborg may raise, in order to show how in many cases the cyborg has been used, even if in a dissimulated way, to reinstate the ‘natural’, normative order with its known distinct and very well defined categories and divisions. But, more importantly, I propose here an alternative to the figure of the cyborg which, I believe, has more possibilities of ‘keeping the promises’ of subverting the normative order of Western thought. This alternative is the one presented by the figure of the grotesque body. The grotesque body, I will argue, contains in itself the seeds of a real hybrid, fragmented, non-binarian thought. The relevance of my proposal is that, in opposition to the cyborg, the grotesque body does not present the dangers of a reinforcement of the old categories which support the powers-that-be in maintaining oppression and domination. Unlike the cyborg, the grotesque body does not make possible a return to the Cartesian frame, with its clear danger of losing one more time the embodied subject (and losing with it the concrete, non-neutral subject), which the postmodern and feminist thought strived so hard to bring to the philosophical and political scene.

The thesis uses a feminist approach to explore the representation of the cyborg in Japanese film and animation in relation to gender, the body, and national identity. Whereas the figure of the cyborg is predominantly pervasive in cinematic science fiction, the Japanese popular imagination of cyborgs not only crosses cinematic genre boundaries between monster, disaster, horror, science fiction, and fantasy but also crosses over to the medium of animation. In regard to the academic research on Japanese cinema and animation, there is a serious gap in articulating concepts such as live-action film, animation, gender, and the cyborg. This thesis, therefore, intends to fill the gap by investigating the gendered cyborg through a feminist lens to understand the interplay between gender, the body and the cyborg within historical-social contexts. Consequently, the questions proposed below are the starting point to reassess the relationship between Japanese cinema, animation, and the cyborg. How has Japanese popular culture been obsessed with the figure of the cyborg? What is the relationship between Japanese live-action film and Japanese animation in terms of the popular imagination of the cyborg? In particular, how might we discuss the representation of the cyborg in relation to the concept of national identity and the associated ideology of “Japaneseness”, within the framework of Donna Haraway’s influential cyborg theory and feminist theory?