Jessie's Webliography

Webliogragy 1

Daniel Pimley. Cyborg Futures: Cyborgs, Cyberpunk and the future of the. Retrieved from 13^th March, 2011. http://www.pimley.net/documents/cyborgfutures.pdf

Summary

In Daniel Pimley’s works, he has obviously offered a two-side view on the issue of cyborg futures. On one hand, Donna Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” and the views of William Gibson’s cyberspace were both referred in the paper. The boundaries between human/ machine or nature/ culture are challenged and overcome in the end. On the other hand, by looking into contemporary cultural products like films, animations and videos, we discover another picture regarding to the issue: it seems that gendered identity presented by the media is still omnipresent. Although the imagination of the future body in media representations have much effort for breaking down the binary between human and machine, gender binary still remain within its boundaries. For example, Japanese Animation Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Björk’s music video and even the use of online communities are full of gendered symbolic meanings. While queer cyborg is often absent, as the author suggests after his observations on the media products, gender is still of great important for our identity.

Webliogragy 2

Esperanza Miyake. “My, is that Cyborg a Little bit Queer”' Journal of International Women's Studies 5(2) 2004. Retrieved from 13^th March, 2011. http://www.bridgew.edu/soas/jiws/Mar04/Miyake.pdf.

Summary

“My, is that Cyborg a little Queer?” was inspired the film which is “Blade Runner (1982)” in which the cyborg characters had led to the start of this paper. In fact the work aims at providing reflection upon the importance of Donna Haraway’s manifesto: “A Cyborg Manifesto”. In order to have a solid foundation for the discussion, the author referred to the other piece of work by Stein and Plummer “I can’t even think straight”: “Queer Theory and the Missing Sexual Revolution in Sociology” (1996). The concept from Stein and Plummer of “Cyberia” and “Queerdonia” were firstly brought up. Regarding to these two concepts, there are three characteristics by which the author discussed the question step by step: “conceptualization of sexuality which sees sexual power embodied in different levels of social life, expressed discursively and enforced through boundaries and binary divides”, “problematizes sexual and gender categories, and identities in general” and “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” In particular, the author explained that, in fact, how the cyberspace provides us a possibility to challenge, even break the notion of gender binaries or race categories and become a queer cyborg.

Webliogragy 3

Nina Lykke. “Are Cyborgs Queer?”. Retrieved from 13^th March, 2011. http://xoomer.virgilio.it/raccontarsi/presentazioni2006/LIANA.pdf.

Summary

In the paper, the main question that the author Nina Lykke would like to deal with is how cultural imaginary breaks the view of biological determinism in the era of digital age in which human’s body is going to reappear in terms of different symbols and codes in the world of cyberspace. By deploying the two crucial concepts: “cyborg” and “queer” as the players in the text, Nina explored different discourses, narratives and cultural imaginaries and tried to figure out the image of reappear human. As Nina said, “While the cyborg deconstructs dichotomies and hierarchies between organism/machine, nature/culture, sex/gender etc., the queer breaks down dichotomies between different kinds of sexual orientation as well as the link between reproduction and sexual desires and identities.” She found that different appropriation would be exist under different power relationship. The discovery provided by Nina has fill the gap between or the relationship between queer and cybrog.

Webliogragy 4

Theresa M. Senft. “Feminism, Technology, Performance”. Women and the Arts Conference. Rutgers University. May 18, 1998. Retrieved from 13^th March, 2011. http://www.terrisenft.net/writing/rutgers.html.

Summary

The talk which is given by Theresa M. Senft was talking about the question of whether it is good to be cyborg rather than a human/woman. “Ubu Roi” which was being mentioned in the talk by the Theresa was one of French artist Orlan “Carnal Arts” performance in 1988.After watching the performance, it reminds Theresa of what Haraway’s famous line in “A Cyborg Manifesto”,” I’d rather be a cyborg than a goddess” that she was reflecting upon if it is good to be a cyborg. In the talk, she introduced two performances by two feminists which come from Orlan and Sharon Lehner respectively. Theresa compared the two performances and she did not agree with the meanings behind Orlan’s but Sharon’s one. It is because Theresa deemed that Orlan could only see herself in the performance but not a world-wide vision in the digital age. Moreover, Orlan seems to perform how a cyborg returns to a goddess but not a cyborg. Therefore, in the case of Orlan, Theresa still preferred to be a woman rather than a cyborg. In fact, the two sides of the views of Orlan and Theresa are the two imaginations of our future embodiment of our, especially women’s, bodies.

Webliogragy 5

Veronica Hollinger. “(Re)Reading Queerly: science Fiction, Feminism, and the Defamiliarization of gender”. March 1999. Retrieved from 13^th March, 2011. http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/77/hollinger77.htm.

Summary

As the author Veronica Hollinger suggests in her works, “(Re) Reading Queerly: science Fiction, Feminism, and the Defamiliarization of gender”, cyborg as well as queer in the cyberspace is a “zone of possibilities” which is sometimes ironic. The identity in this zone is not static but mutable without gendered or sexed fixation. It is not the matter of whether it is a heterosexual or homosexual identity because sexualities are subject to change in the cyberspace. Indeed, science fiction is a good platform and good resources for investigating into the relationship between sexuality and cyborg. Many of the cyborg in science fiction are represented and quoted in Veronica’s works like "The Mystery of the Young Gentleman" (1982). In the science fictions which were included in the paper, the utopian of cyborg is represented and gender binary was broken under the narrative of the stories. Veronica’s has provided us a multi-perspective and various versions of utopian queer cyborg worlds with rich examples and good analysis.