Question 4: Is a cyborg queer? Discuss critical thinking on the intersections between sexuality and technology.
1. Lykke, Nina. “Are Cyborgs Queer?”
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/raccontarsi/presentazioni2006/LIANA.pdf (accessed
In the traditional sense, our society is developed and maintained by the biological determinism which emphasizes in naturalization and normalization of essential links between biological sex, sexuality, reproductive capacities, gendered subjectivity and hierarchical gender system. However, in the last decades, the biological determinism was attacked by the new scientific reproductive technologies, which separate the reproduction from sex, causes desexualization and deconstruction of cultural imaginary process, and brings along the social problem on identification. Since the cyborg and the queer are regarded as the wealth of feminist theorist, that they have played an important role in sustaining the concept of feminist theory. Therefore, they are used as the framework of the reference for the discussion on the deconstruction of biological determinism. In writer’s points of view, the sex and sexuality are the products of cultural imaginary which are constructed by the socio-cultural and historical power. However, due to the introduction of the new reproductive technologies, the cultural imaginary of “natural” and “normal” reproduction is broken as the children of the cyborgs and the queer can be “made” in a laboratory by using the advanced reproductive technology without natural sexual encounter between a female and a male body. Although the cyborgs and the queer as well as the infertility couples are benefit from the technological reproductive development, the writer thinks that the “cyborg-babies” will become another controversial social problem because of their uncertain identities due to the collapse of the “natural family” which is supported by the biological determinism.
2. Miyake, Esperanza. “My, is that Cyborg a little bit Queer?”
http://www.bridgew.edu/SOAS/jiws/Mar04/Miyake.pdf (accessed
In this essay, the writer, Esperanza Miyake, tried to investigate how the cyborgqueer idea embodies feminism by comparing the queer theory in different aspects. She used a journey to Cyb(que)erland as the opening that inviting the readers to join her to introduce “the Cyneria” and “the Queerdonia”, which represent the theory of cyborg and queer respectively, and look into the related issues on feminism. In the journey, her spacecraft will take the passengers (readers) to three main areas, where are the themes and issues of this essay focuses on, to understand and find out the concepts behind. The first area is the “conceptualization of sexuality which sees sexual power embodied in different levels of social life, expressed discursively and enforced through boundaries and binary divides”. It is the cyber area which is body-power interrelated. It claims all the power, including the production, sexuality, knowledge and discourse, are the energies come from the body. However, in this area, technology is the premium. It gives us freedom and power over our bodies to create our ideal identities which help us to live another bodily reality. After that, we move to the second area: “problematization of sexual and gender categories, and of identities in general. Identities are always on uncertain grounds, entailing displacement of identification and knowing”, that highlights the vagueness of gender. In the cyberworld, we are all queer cyborgs as gender becomes fluid, that everybody can reconstruct another racial and ethnic identity which is different from the reality anytime. Through the practice of identity creation, it made the class of “men” and “women” disappear altogether. Finally, we landed on the last area: “the rejection of civil-rights strategies in favor of a politics of carnival, transgression, and parody which leads to deconstruction, decentering, revisionist readings, and anti-assimilationist politics”. It is the place about the breakdown of three boundaries: human/animal, organic/machine and physical/non-physical. It suggested the growing technology makes the distinction between private and public become more and more blurred which means we are in a position to embody the outside power, and also empower the outside body.
3. Chess, Shira. “The C-Word: Queering the Cylons.”
http://shiraland.com/Work/bsg_sample.pdf (accessed
In this article, the writer tried to look into the theory of cyborg and queer in order to investigate the possibility of legitimizing form of queer and alternate reproductive practices. It gives a brief introduction of Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” which suggested the breakdown of three boundaries made possible the cyborg to become the representative of feminist theories as the social norms and ideology are deconstructed and liquidated by technology. In the writer’s opinion, we are in the age of cyborg, that we combine ourselves with technology, blurring our own lines between ourselves and our machines, in order to improve ourselves and make our bodies more efficient. Nevertheless, the writer raised technological reproduction as an example to state that the implement of technology will become a secret concern as it may affect the traditional ideology and brings social problem. Since we heavily rely on technology nowadays, it has changed us into the hybrid of human and machine, and made us to become queer. The heterosexuality is eventually deconstructed that gender no longer necessarily dependent in sexual reproduction as cyborg-babies can be produced asexually and technologically. The practice of technological reproduction came up with some social problems: the legitimating of the identity of “queer-babies” and the reproductive practices. As the “queer-babies” are the product of reproductive technology which are produced unnaturally in laboratory, once their identities are legitimized, it means the alternate reproductive practices are also legitimized, that strengthen the feminism, but destroyed the heteronormative society.
4. Russo, Julie Levin. “NEW VOY ‘cyborg sex’ J/7 [NG-17] 1/1: new methodologies, new fantasies.”
http://j-l-r.org/asmic/fanfic/print/jlr-cyborgsex.pdf (accessed
Through analysising the characters presented in the J/7, a popular TV drama about cyborg hybrids, the feminist and queer theories are explored and examined. The “Cyborg Manifesto” of Donna Haraway and the “Sex in Public” of Berlant and Warner are used for suggesting how the social discourses, including gender and sexuality, are changed progressively associated with these mutations. In the writer’s view, she thinks that the cyborg is the transformation of “sex” into “genetic engineering”, which is a metaphoric figure for resistance from within terrifying new dominations; while public sex is a challenge to the foundation of patriarchy, that hierarchical dominations are founded in large part on the constructed private space of heterosexual intimacy. She put them together to make cyborg sex, which represents non-sexual reproduction and non-reproductive sex, to emphasize and provide the understanding on current cultural transformations, as well as undermine and recast modern oppressions.
5. Franklin, Sarah. “The Cyborg Embryo: Our Path to Transbiology.”
http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/23/7-8/167.full.pdf+html (accessed
Sarah Franklin, the writer of this article, is a social scientist with an interest in reproductive technology and has written numerous of books and articles on related topics. In this research essay, she mainly focuses on the transbiology, as issue about how a cyborg embryo is made and born through advanced reproductive technologies, which based on the idea of Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” to reveal how the social values, systems and aspirations are being engineered and constructed. In her opinion, she negates the human values on biologization and thinks that it is outdated. However, she recognizes transbiology is a moral practice and has its own specificity which facilitates the coding mechanism.
By HO Wai-sze, Charlotte (10382282)
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