Abe's Webliography

4) Is a cyborg queer? Discuss critical thinking on the intersections between sexuality and technology.

Lists of 5 relevant researches:

1. O'Riordan, Kate. (2007) Queer Online: Media Technology and Sexuality. New York: Peter Lang. http://www.google.com/books?hl=zh-TW&lr=&id=c30mXS56jQMC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=sexuality+and+technology&ots=CZ1UCJLIBX&sig=YOl6GEPp9--7UWeQ1lIvRIkALUQ#v=onepage&q&f=false (accessed 13 March 2011)

“Queer Online: Media Technology and Sexuality” was written by Kate O’Riordan, a senior lecturer of Media Studies in University of Sussex and it is one of the result of her contemporary research study on how science and technology deploy the sexuality and gender. In this book, it mainly focuses on discussing the queer theory and the practices of their intersection with the mass media technology. The book can be divided clearly into four parts: theoretical, community and spatiality, identities and practices and structures and agencies. The fields that the book had covered are all-rounded, by providing sufficient analysis of current and historical internet activities. For example, the book includes the study of gender and sexuality in the aspects of technology politics, computer cross-dressing, leathersex identities, etc.. The relations between the online media and the practices of queer were deeply investigated throughout all the chapters. The writer examines not only the realities of gender and queer identities, but also the micro politics that are involved. This texture provides rich empirical information and critical analysis by investigating the activists and members of queer communities, as well as exploring more about the queer and the cyberspace relations.

2. Walton, Heather. (2004) The Gender of the Cyborg, Theology and Sexuality. London: Equinox, 33-44. http://tse.sagepub.com/content/10/2/33.full.pdf+html (accessed 13 March 2011)

Dr. Heather Walton has a rich experience in studying gender and sexuality and is currently a senior lecture at the University of Glasgow. In this article, “The gender of the cyborg”, Heather mainly concentrated on discussing the sexual politics of the contemporary cyborg world, especially in the field of the iconography and the implication of women. Although this article was written base on a theological view, it is still very useful for learning more about the changes of sexuality among cyborg with the interrogations and arguments provided by Heather. The article also tries to question and examine whether the representational practices in our digital media ages are confirming or challenging the gender regulation. Moreover, Heather also explores the linkage between the cyborg and the queer in the article. With her background of theology studies, the article also includes the discussion of the potential of 'cyborg theology'.

3. “Sexy Cyborgs: The Gender Without Origin” Brock University Wiki: Kumu. https://kumu.brocku.ca/robowiki/%22Sexy_Cyborgs:_The_Gender_Without_Origin%22 (accessed 14 March 2011)

The aim of the article “Sexy Cyborgs: The Gender Without Origin” is trying to find out the answer of whether cyborg, either as a metaphor or a real lived object, takes a role to rewrite the issues around gender and identity in our society. The arguments in this article were supported by different theories or ideas from professional of relevant fields, such as Donna Harraway, Bakutman and Judith Butler. At first, the concepts of cyborgs and the problem of gender inequalities were introduced clearly to the readers. Following by raising the problem of the nature association that women were separated from the centre of technology, the author further examines the style of how we performing our gender in the cyberspace. The idea of gender performativity was used to explain how the cyborg breaks the nature origin of gender and that gender is not composed by the identity of ‘self’ or any preexisting identity. In the article, it is suggested that the cyborg helps to reveal the fact of how gender is being constantly repeated and performed in our life. The article ends with the example of the movie series of “The Terminator”, in order to explain the relations between cyborg and gendered identities.

4. Lykke, Nina. (2000) ‘Are Cyborgs Queer?’ http://www.women.it/quarta/workshops/epistemological4/ninalykke.htm (accessed 14 March 2011)

‘Are Cyborgs Queer?’ is a research paper by Dr. Nina Lykke from Linköping University. It is obvious that the article’s framework was taken from the queer theory of Judith Butler and the cyborg theory of Donna Haraway. Besides the relationship of queer and cyborg, Nina also explores how the cultural imaginary process the de-sexualization and the scientification of reproduction, as well as the establishment of the contiguity between cyborg and queer. With the emergence of new reproductive technologies, several practices and examples in our daily life were used to explain that the gendered, sexual and reproductive identities are actually a process of social, cultural and legal construction. The science book “Remaking Eden ” by Princeton biologist Lee Silver was used to exemplified how normal of every thinkable queer desires for a child are in recent years. Lastly, the fear of “queer cyborg” was also mentioned in the paper, which is a controversial issue of the normalized heterosexual society. Thus, this research paper shows how the cyborg, especially the bio-technology helps to break the legitimacy of the social and power inequalities brought by the biological determinists, such as gender, race, class, etc.. Moreover, it also suggests how the bio-technological development changes and enables us to understand the gender identities in our world.

5. Pimley,Daniel. (2003) ‘Cyborg Futures: Cyborgs, Cyberpunk and the future of the body’http://www.pimley.net/documents/cyborgfutures.pdf (accessed 12 March 2011)

Daniel Pimley is a London film editor and he tries to explore what the future of cyborg would be in this article. The concepts of Donna Harraway’s cyborg and William Gibson’s Cyberpunk were discussed and used to support his idea of disembodied future and gendered cyborgs. As once human enter the world of cyberspace, he is immediately transformed into a cyborg. Thus, the cyborg breaks through the physical constrains as the body is represented as a shell and is detachable from the mind. The writter also suggests several influential relevant ideas: with the advancement of technology in spheres of communications, medicine, surgery, genetics and robotics, the distinction between human and machine is increasingly blurred; gender is important for recognizing our identities, which cannot be abandoned easily in the post-gender cyborg utopia. Here, the films of “Akira” and “Ghost of the Shell” were analysed to exemplify the above ideas. However, the future may not necessarily disembodied and even without the presence of the biological body, it does not necessarily mean the absence of gender, with gender can now be alternately illustrated by the cyborg. Björk’s music video of “All is Full of Love” was used to explain this concept. It suggested that cyborgs are gendered, as the robots’ bodies are sexualized. The article helps the readers to be aware of the formless mind and disembodied cyborg in a post-gender society.