Cyborgs in art and life: fictional cyborgs

Human with mechanical attributes: (4 look female; 6 look male)– L’Horlogere (mechanical mistress)– Number 18 (from Dragonball Z)– Robocop– The Bionic Woman– Jax (from Mortal Kombat)– 6 Million Dollar Man– Molly and Dixie Flatline (from Neuromancer)– Seven of Nine (from Star Trek)

Machine with human attributes: (1 looks female; 4 look male; 1 can change its appearance)– Data (from Star Trek)– Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 1 or Terminator 2)– Vicky (from Small Wonder)– T-1000 (from Terminator 2)– Andrew (from Bicentennial Man)– D.A.R.Y.L

Human with magical attributes (magic as another way of controlling nature): (1 male, 1 female)– Harry Potter– Fibi (from Charmed)

Cyborgs in art and life: real-life cyborgsExample: The technology involved:Wearable Computers Chips in clothes, cupsKevin Warwick Implant that records nerve impulsesSteve Mann Electrodes and laser computer display in eyeArtificial limbsChips and gears to replace lost limbStem Cell Research Transplants of nerve cellsRat Robots Rats w/ implants to control movement, feelingCloned livestock Copies of animals, potentially used for foodPlastic pods Lightweight barriers to seal off diseaseFlorida “Cyborg Family” Microchip implants for trackingTom Christerson AbioCor artificial heartJens Artificial vision sensors to replace lost visionLexus factory in Japan Robots doing most work; need human helpDanielle DuvalMicrochip for trackingStephen Hawking Motorized wheelchair and computer voice Xybernaut Wearable computer w/ display covering 1 eye“Cloned” virtual humans Computer-animated people based on real ones

Does ideology of technology which promises to liberate the body from

its constraints correspond to reality in which we live, or does it

only reproduce the existing patterns of power and authority?

“The dichotomies that reflect a shift from the comfortable old hierarchicaldomination to the new networks I call the Informatics of Domination”

(Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto (1991), 161

• Representation• Eugenics [biology]• Hygiene• Microbiology, tuberculosis• Organic division of labour• Sex• Labour• Mind• Racial chain of being

• White Capitalist Patriarchy

• Simulation• Population control• Stress management• Immunology, AIDS• Ergonomics /cybernetics of labor• Genetic Engineering• Robotics• Artificial Intelligence• Neo-imperialism, United Nations

humanism• Informatics of Domination

Informatics of Domination

• biotechnology & medicine have the power for liberation but in fact they do not reverse the existing patterns of power & authority

• if they are further strengthening the cultural definitions of gender

• through practice that involves male professional power and its inscription on a woman’s body

• through research guided by the commercial interests of ‘biotechnology-industrial complex’

Technologies of beauty

Technologies of health: women and medical

technology; technologies of reproduction

Technologies of Beauty: Balsamo• gender is a boundary concept because at the same time it

refers to a physiological body and the body that ‘makes sense’ in a cultural context

• interesting to look at how technology (specifically biotechnology) is used to ‘produce’ gender through the body

• technologies are potentially liberating (neutral) but are they neutral in actual application when defining male / female bodies?

Technologies of Beauty: Balsamo• traditional and ideological belief about gender

extended by technologies of beauty & reproduction

“female body positioned as a privileged object of a normative gaze that is now not simply a medicalized gaze (‘the clinicaleye’) but a technologized view (‘technological gaze’)”

• biotechnology & medicine: cosmetic surgery, reproductive technologies, medical visualisation

Technologies of Beauty: Balsamoinscription, surveillance, confession

• inscription: body becomes object for inscription of cultural texts

• surveillance: body can be examined through the technological gaze (abstracted from the reality of its actual experience as autonomous, complete)

• confession:what are the different justifications that patients, and ads give for morphing bodies (men / women, p. 218, p. 221)

Technologies of Beauty: Balsamocosmetic surgery

• body is reconstructed technologically, not only object of medical consideration

• Balsamo uses examples of interactions bw medical surgeons and patients and justifications in the media

• implies that woman needs to fit an ideal, she is flawed and in need of reconstruction

• the aesthetic perfection of the ‘Ideal Face’ is modeled upon existing hierarchies of power and the Caucasian ideal of beauty (race, gender)

Source: Inderpal Grewal & Caren Kaplan, An Introduction to Women’s Studies, 392

Technologies of Health: Balsamomedical visualisation

• body becomes an object of surveillance• body becomes abstraction that is re-imagined through

medical imaging (laparoscopy, ultrasound) • body as information • practical implications:

• natural to think of mother and foetus as distinct and disconnected (changes the attitudes to how women’s rights are perceived in the area of birth control)

• ability of medical profession to re-define the beginning of life

Technologies of Reproductiontechnologies of reproduction

• reproductive technologies are controlling human biological reproduction

• medicalization and mechanization of childbirth• the Pill, contraceptive technologies• fertility treatments: in-vitro fertilization, transplanting

ovaries from fetuses, surrogate mothers

Technologies of Reproduction• List various technologies of reproduction.

• What are the social implications of each of these various technologies?

• To what degree are they liberating for women’s sexuality, enabling women to have control over reproduction, to control the image of their bodies? To what degree are they limiting?

Reproductive Technologies feminist perspectives on reproductive technology

• often presented as transforming women’s lives for the better but not necessarily liberating for women, or adding more control over their bodies

• analysis of technologies as key to women’s liberation or subjugation

• ideal of reproductive technology as neutral

Source: J. Wajcman: Reproductive Technology: Delivered into Men’s Hands. In Feminism Confronts Technology (U Pennsylvania P, 1999), 55.

Technocriticism

Technocriticism: Woodward

• post-industrial society affords potential for affecting nature high-tech reproductive technologies

• ambivalence about the uses and development of procedures that reinforce existing inequalities

• technological culture is based on the idea of progress, development but this jars with the biological future

Technocriticism: Woodward

• Woodward suggests analysis in which technology is used as neutral

• need to ‘detach biological roles and sequences from social roles such as parenting’ that would allow for social acceptance of some of the radical procedures in infertility treatment, or the aging body

Technocriticism: Woodward

“We should explore in a positive spirit the possibilities offered by biotechnology as they intersect with issues concerning the aging body. Why should women not extend their biological capabilities with, for example, such [radical, such as transplanting ovaries from dead foetuses to infertile women] reproductive technologies? On the other hand, the grandiose fantasy of eliminating altogether the inevitable process and consequences of aging reveals a prejudice against aging that is harmful to all of us. Indeed, the limits to the extension of the power and control of the human body with the aid of technology can be clearly seen in the context of the body as it ages.”

(Woodward, p. 291)