Interesting post, Melissa! I too am interested in cyborgs- presumnably you
were looking at Donna Haraway's "Manifesto....."? She mentions a whole
bunch of novels from Vonda McIntyre's Superluminal, to Varley's Triton,
Demon, Wizard, Delany, Russ, Butler , McCaffrey's The Ship
Who Sang, and others. Interestingly, in many of these books
cyborgs per se are absent- or technology is treated ambivilently. In
Russ's Female Man for example a woman in an induction helmet can perform
the tasks of a thousand, but over in Manland men are
transformed to women way that reifies male/female relations, and
technology is devoted to war. So
cyborgs cut both ways in Russ. In terms of Haraway's notion of the
boundary between machine and human breaking down, Tanith Lee's The Silver
Metal Lover is interesting as the machine *becomes* human. As Harraway
might say "our machines are disturbingly lively while we are frightenly
inert" (this may not be a totally accurate quote- the memory, alas,
fades).
I'm interested
actually in the time frame of Harraway- when she first wrote her paper
(around 1983 I think) technology must of seemed to offer a window of
opportunity- now I suspect it has narrowed somewhat. With cyber-rapes
and cyberstalkings, and cyborgs in the movies simply reinforcing "natural"
(uh!) sexual differences (Robocop and the Terminator being examples of
supposedly sexless machines being definitely "hard" and masculine), it
may be that this window of opportunity- that the dissolving of boundaries
between human/machine and hence other binaries like male/female- has
closed.I know Harraway shouldn't be treated too literally, as she was
engaged in an ironic project- a kind of myth making-but nonetheless
developments in the technological world seem to me to be more dystopian
than utopian. In that sense perhaps Harraway's project has failed.I'd
appreciate any comments that may disabuse me of this sad conclusion!
The only female cyborg in the movies I can think of is the borg Queen in
Star Trek. It seemed to me, once again, to simply reinforce sexual
boundaries and reflect male anxieties. The connection between sex and
death for example, as the erotic "other" almost lures Data to a sexual
doom! Then the borg queen as the phallic women, with the drill heading
alarmingly towards Picard's impressive doomed forehead!Pentration!
castration!The Horror, the horror! Then the stunning
shot of Picard as a drone in a vast hive of all other captives- all
servicing the Queen bee! Its all great fun, but
not, alas, sexually revolutionary.Can anyone think of other female cyborgs
in the movies?Do things pan out any better???
Thanks for an interesting post Melissa!
Tanya.
PS the writer of The Terminal Experiment was Robert Sawyer- a Canadian- he
spoke at a SF class I TA'ed at this year. An articulate man with an
incredibly simple and clear prose style which is very good for
storytelling, only I'm not so sure that the novel has alot of complexity.
This is not precisely a criticism- there is alot to be said for
storytelling.
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