Sherry's work: Question 1

Question: In Haraway’s ‘Cyborg manifesto’, she strategically assigns her cyborg a female gender. In what ways is gender significant in the representation of cyborgs in popular culture and technoscience?

In my research I found 10 good articles to include in my webliography. My search process was quite simple: I started searching using the google.com search engine. Basically, I started by typing in keywords “Cyborg”, “Haraway”, “Gender”, “feminism”, and then “film” or “technology” to search for articles. I then focused on web-sites with “.edu”, or those that contained articles from students or were course introductions from universities.
In this paper, I will use the articles to show what a cyborg is, how it is a “site” of possibility and resistance. Then, I will then show how the representation of cyborg’s gender in film fails to make Haraway’s predictions come true. After this I look at a few articles about techno-science and cyborgs and show that even there, the cyborg is used to reinforce cultural gender bias. However, at the end, I find a few articles that show that is some ways techno-science; specifically man/machine partnerships actually realize some of Haraway’s suggestions about possibility.
In the article The Cyberfeminist fantasy of the Pleasure of the cyborg 1 the author, Yvonne Volkart, discusses Haraway’s figuration of cyborg as “an ageless naughty, unruled and nasty girl”. Volkart further pictures the Cyborg as a “polychromatic girl” who is “untamed”, “stubborn” and “unruly”; a cyborg that will not obey, will rebel and cannot be straightened out. This article is useful to clarify that Haraway actually gave her cyborg a gender. This is important as it is the starting point of the essay; why a female cyborg? [1]

At this point, I will use the following essays to show what a cyborg is, what sort of “possibility” it has and what that means to women in the real world.

Andrew Arsham’s article Power and Invisibility illustrates Haraway’s suggestion that technology/machines have become more and more dominant and, in contrast, human beings are losing their agency. Because of this, Haraway suggests that becoming cyborgs allows us to catch up and face with this changes/crisis. Specifically it is a “new way” to gain power. This article gives clear background information into the reason Haraway “created” a cyborg and how cyborgs can be used to make her theory real. [2]

Technics of Cyberfeminism: Strategic Sexualisations. Between Method and Fantasy by Yvonne Volkart is an important article in that it shows why Haraway gave her cyborg a gender. Haraway admits that her cyborg is a bad girl but never a “sensitive man”. Haraway suggests that gender is always a question in terms of the human mind. Gender is “not a thing of the past” but is in the present and the future. Volkart’s article shows that because gender is always the “master tools” that help us see the world, we are unable to see beyond gender. She states that Haraway uses a female cyborg to give “possibility” to women in the world. If her cyborg can go beyond the limitations of gender, then it is possible for women to do so as well. [3]

At this point, I will make a transition to an article that gives examples of early science fiction writing and its uses of cyborgs. This article is important because it shows that Haraway’s idea was also used by science fiction writers that the cyborg gave women the “possibility” of power was actually used by early writers.

Barbara Summerhawk’s article He, She or It: The Cyborg De-Constructs gender in Post Modern Science Fiction shows the changes of female characters portrayed in Science-fiction 60’s and 70’s. Summerhawk sees that science fiction, began to challenge questions of identity, power relations and gender. She says that they made women characters that relied on traditional gender concepts but began to show some traditional masculine elements; they were physically strong, courage and intelligent. Summerhawk says that these early writers showed the possibility of different gender rules/roles and at the same time, questioned the nature of gender and social constructs. Summerhawk mentions that Donna Haraway showed that the old rules of “white, heterosexual male always the most dominated” are out of date. Haraway wanted new relationships between human being where everyone was equal; everyone carried temporary identities, everyone shared and created culture. But Summerhawk also suggests that there are dangerous possibilities: people see the cyborg as a masculine female figure/body which has the potential of fighting in a war or even taking over the world (political reality). [4]

At this point I will start a new section: The representation of cyborgs in popular culture. In this section I will use a few articles that look at films that use female cyborgs. These articles show that despite being powerful, these female cyborgs (sometimes called Artificial Intelligence or Replicant (hybrid of human and machine)) fail to live up to the potential Haraway suggests is part of cyborg. First it is important to give some background into the use of cyborgs in Hollywood movies.

Brianna Kleinschmidt’s article Hollywood’s Version of Artificial Intelligence: How Movies Portray Machine Learning and Its Capabilities and Carl Silvio’s article Refiguring the Radical Cyborg in Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell talk about how cyborgs are extensions of the human imagination. What this means is that science-fiction films provide us with a “site” or “platform” to make “real” people’s imagination about Cyborgs. This imagination not only reflects the positive aspects but also the negative. The negative aspects include anxieties about contemporary technology. Silvio reminds us that many of the works (futurist film or science-fiction) succeeded in depicting the interaction between human and machine but fail to represent the feminist issues of gender and gender bias. [5] and [6]

After giving background information about the use of cyborgs in Hollywood films, I want to use two articles - one by JoAnna Thomsen and one by Uta Scheer - to explain how these female cyborgs fail in representing feminine/gender issues. In Cyberpunk Women of Neuromancer, The Matrix, and Blade Runner by JoAnna Thomsen and Uta Scheer’s Genered (Cy)Borgs: Body Technologies and Sexual Politics in Star Trek, the authors points out that a common representation of female cyborgs as sometime strong, independent and intelligent. However, they are often portrayed as a mere sex objects or as femme fatales with short-lives. Characters such as Rachel, Pris and Zhora in Blade Runner show how female cyborgs are strong and capable, but ultimately end up failing. Scheer’s article shows how another female cyborg (The Borg Queen in Star Trek) is also unable to live up to Haraway’s possibility. Scheer points out that the Borg Queen to a high degree portrays the traditional and stereotypical role of a female cyborg characters. Ultimately these films and television shows simply end up reinforcing and consolidating the typical gender stereotype with female subordination (female as sex object or femme fatale). [7] and [8]

As the articles above show, the possibility that Haraway gave to her female cyborg has been denied. Many popular culture media use a female cyborg but only do so as a means of reinforcing the traditional gender stereotypes. In the last section of my paper, I will look at several articles on Technoscience to see if the concept of cyborg helps make Haraway’s ideas of possibility come true.

In the article Final Question #1 by Julian Philips, the author looks a the pornography industry as a “site” of literal cyborgs. This article is valuable because it gives examples of “real” cyborgs, and not just “imaginary” cyborgs found in film and television. Unfortunately the pornographic film industry takes up the concept of a “sexual cyborg” where pornographic film stars, both male and female, use drugs to enhance their performance or surgery to exaggerate their physical attributes which only further reinforce sexual stereotypes. [9]

Finally, Paul Wolfe’s article A Synthesis of man and Machines: Defining the Cyborg of Today looks at another form of cyborg: the man/ machine partnership. Wolfe says that humans are becoming more like cyborgs and that cyborgs or machine are more saturated into our lives. These partnerships are actually beneficial and effective. This article shows that the techno-science (cyborg / machine) actually supports Haraway’s ideas of the cyborg as a possibility. Unfortunately, the role of these cyborgs is limited to military and medical uses so far. [10]


In conclusion, Donna Haraway gave her cyborg a gender (female) because she wanted that cyborg to be an image of possibility for women. Unfortunately, as is obvious from the articles, popular culture has only used the image of the cyborg to reinforce and consolidate the traditional gender roles. However, there is some hope: technoscience, using the cyborg concept of partnership, shows some signs of realizing Haraway’s possibility.

Reference:

[1] Volkart, Yvonne. The Cyberfeminist Fantasy of the Pleasure of the Cyborg 1. No date. 23 Mar. 2007 <http://www.obn.org/reading_room/writings/html/cyberfem_fantasy.html>

[2] Arsham, Andrew. Power and Invisibility. No date. 23 Mar. 2007
<http://www.koni.ch/cyborg/cyborg.html.>


[3] Volkart, Yvonne. The Cyberfeminist Fantasy of the Pleasure of the Cyborg 1. No date. 23 Mar. 2007 <http://www.obn.org/reading_room/writings/html/strategic_sex.html>

[4] Summerhawk, Barbara. He, She or It: The Cyborg De-Constructs gender in Post Modern Science Fiction. July 1998. 23 Mar. 2007 <http://davidmswitzer.com/slonczewski/summerhawk.html>

[5] Kleinschmidt, Brianna. Hollywood’s Version of Artificial Intelligence: How Movies Portray Machine Learning and Its Capabilities No date. 23 Mar. 2007 <http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/warner/english122tg/student.html>
[6] Silvio, Carl. Refiguring the Radical Cyborg in Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell Mar. 1990 DePauw University 23 Mar. 2007 <http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/77/silvio77.htm.>

[7] Thomsen, JoAnna. Cyberpunk Women of Neuromancer, the Matrix, and Blade Runner Jun. 2000. 23 mar. 2007 <http://brmovie.com/Anaylsis/CyberGrrrlz.html>

[8] Scheer, Uta. Genered (Cy)Borgs: Body Technologies and Sexual Politics in Star Trek. Aug 2003 University of Goettingen. 23 Mar. 2007 <http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ati/Visions/V1/s7a.htm.>

[9] Philips, Julian. Final Question #1. Dec, 2006. 23 Mar. 2007 <http://arguere.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html.>

[10] Wolfe, Paul. A Synthesis of man and Machines: Defining the Cyborg of Today No date. 23 Mar. 2007 <http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/warner/english122tg/student.html#cyborgtech.>