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Contents 1 Sexy Cyborgs: The Gender Without Origin. 1.1 Cyborgisms 1.2 Performing Genders: Cyber Style 1.3 Terminal Point: Gender in the Terminator Series 2 See Also 3 Works Cited

[edit] Sexy Cyborgs: The Gender Without Origin.

[edit] Cyborgisms

The goal of my presentation is to consider how the cyborg as a metaphor and a real lived object plays to and rewrites issues around gender and identity in post-human/postmodern theory. I will be borrowing ideas from Harraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” (1991)^[1], meanwhile infusing the research of Bakutman’s “Terminal Flesh” (1993) ^[2]and also considering Judith Butler’s idea of gender performativity (1990)^[3]. These works will be fused (in my own cyborg amalgamation) to consider the Terminator trilogy, along with its recent television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor’s Chronicles.

The cyborg, from a simple definition, is the combination of the terms cybernetic and organism. The early idea of a cyborg was to apply cybernetic control systems to alter “bodily functions to suit different environments” (Clynes and Kline quoted in Thomas, 1995:35). To understand the concept of the cyborg it is necessary to turn to its roots in cybernetics. Cybernetics was a term used to describe a new discursive framework. This term was coined in 1947 to “describe a new emerging science that united communications theory, control theory and statistical mechanics under the auspices of a clear set of disciplinary goals” (Thomas, 1995,28). A key component of cybernetics was the idea of a feedback loop, which is defined as “the property of being able to adjust future conduct by past performance”. Cybernetic systems are not only self-regulating but need a connection outside of their system in order to register their results. These results are fed back into the system, which then determine future actions. Information and communication are thus an integral part of cybernetics.

This new science fundamentally changed the division between man and machine. This re-conceptualization broke down the division by amalgamating both man and machine under a basic organizational practice. As David Thomas puts it “cybernetics… proposed a radically different solution to the fundamental nature of the human organism by proposing that its Being be reduced to an organizational pattern” (original italics 1995:29). Machine systems and living organisms are the same under the ideas of cybernetics. Considering that cybernetics is at the root of the term cyborg it is hard to imagine how humans are not already cyborgs. That is, cyborgs are merely organisms that posses cybernetic systems. The human nervous system by definition is a cybernetic system (Thomas, 1995,30). This definition of the cyborg is far removed from the pop cultural icons of Robocop, Terminator and the Borgs from Star Trek: The Next Generation. And yet, these half-human/half-machine cyborgs can be seen as an embodiment of the fear and desire of what happens now that we have become cyborgs.

Harraway stresses the fact that we are already cyborgs (1991,150)^[4], and that it is our current ontology, our new connection to Being. This cyborg is also without origin in the typical sense. It does not look back to the Oedipal stage; it has no garden of Eden, it cannot return to unity because it is made out of partiality and perversity. This is why the cyborg, for all intents and purposes is, above all else, a matter of boundaries and borders.

So how is this useful and why does it matter? Harraway looks towards the cyborg as both a metaphor and a “creature of social reality”(1991, 149)^[5] but mostly as a tool. She sees in the then current manifestations of feminism (specifically radical and Marxist formulations) a form of control under the assumption of a universal “woman” and a politics of identity. By trying to create a universal experience or a totality of ‘womanhood’ it both erases and polices difference (Harraway, 1991, 158)^[6]. This move also sets women outside of the contemporary, as women as other, eternal and outside real lived experience. Hence the ‘women as nature’ idea and much of ecofeminism “insist[s] on the organic, opposing it to the technological” which places women apart from technology and outside of it. This logic is detrimental because it forces women into a pastoral past, creating an essentialism that suggests that women, because of their inherent ‘naturalness’, cannot be a part of the technological present. Haraway is attempting to break away from previous feminist writing that associates the realm of the female with nature. The problem with the nature association is that it separates women from the vein of technology. Technology is considered a part of ‘white capitalist patriarchy’ and that technology and techno-scientific knowledge (following from a technological determinist view inherent in the fear of technology in previous feminist writing) is self-replicating, denoting and controlling its own meanings. Hence, if the female is associated with its binary opposite, that of nature, then feminists have no way to be included in the highly contemporary technocratic society. Haraway’s cyborg is thus a way to seize “the means of production”(Soufoulis, 2002:85)^[7]. The cyborg as a symbol is a way for feminist ideas to be validated through its inherent combination of nature and technology and how it dismantles and makes strange previous categories of “self/other, mind/body, culture/nature, male/female, civilized/primitive, reality/appearance, whole/part, agent/resource, maker/made, active/passive, right/wrong, truth/illusion, total/partial, God/man” (Harraway, 1991,177)^[8].

Haraway attacks the binary of nature/technology. The cyborg is technology and nature combined which breaks down this other binaries. The feminist reliance on some sort of natural essentialism is foolish and that feminists should “stop pretending [feminists] can somehow occupy a position on technology separate from the institutional and communicative knowledges that have produced [feminists] as certain kinds of historical subjects caught up in certain technological ensembles” (Soufoulis, 2002:86)^[9]. Hence why Harraway stresses her own position as a product of post-WWII/Cold war funding of scientific education. Instead of taking a position outside of the historical world, the cyborg concept allows for a feminist critique within it.

Bukatman continues this rhetoric by suggesting that the “body must become a cyborg” (1993, 247) because, following from Baudrillard, the body ceases to be a “metaphor or symbol” (1993,246)^[10] and remains only a surface of a surface, no longer being connected to any meaning or depth. Simulation and subjectivity become one and the same thing, and that all we can do is simulate our internal state. There is no recourse to a whole self, a truer ‘I’, a ‘real me’ apart from our processes of simulation.

[edit] Performing Genders: Cyber Style

It is here that I would like to present a move away from the inherent ‘feminisms’ of Harraway’s cyborg and suggest how it is useful in a wider consideration of gender politics. Judith Butler’s work on the performativity of gender is enlightening in this respect. In her article “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” (1993)^[11] Butler outlines a key theory that would become remarkably influential in gender and queer studies. In many ways, her beginning point of her argument is in accord with Harraway’s attempts to move beyond the limiting effects of identity categories. Butler states “identity categories tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes… normalizing categories of oppressive structures” (1993, 308)^[12] and thus she points out how these categorize are structured and limiting.

The idea of ‘gender as performance’ fundamentally rewrites previous ideas of a gendered selfhood. One needs to keep in mind a difference between sex and gender. Sex, simply put, is based in biological differences. These differences may be based in genetics or the physical (with all the muddy waters in between) but is still distinct from what is meant by ones gender. Gender, on the other hand, is the cultural codes that we act out. They are the characteristics masculine and feminine.

And, yet, more often than naught, gender and sex are often linked in some form of essentialism or determinism. Gender as a performance instead, dismisses the idea of gender as an internal core of the self. That is, gender is not innate to the body. It is instead a social construction. Our acts, gestures and desires produce the effect of an internal core. That is, the gendered actions that we enact seem to reflect an origin in the self. They purport to suggest an inner identity as a cause.

Otherwise speaking we tend to think of our identity, that is our sex and gender, as the cause for our actions and gestures. As if our male or female core makes us act masculine or feminine. But Butler reverses this notion and suggests it is our actions that create our identity. What is constituted as an effect is in fact the cause. These acts, desires and gestures are thus “performative” because the essence or identity that they purport to express is, in fact, the effect. Our acts create the illusion of an interior-organizing core. According to Butler (1990):

“ gender ought not be construed as a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow, rather gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through the stylized repetition of acts” Thus gender has no ontological status. It does not exist apart from the acts that constitute its reality. What Butler is trying to suggest is that gender is not in fact innate or natural but it is instead performed on a continual basis. It is not that we choose this performance, or that we can willingly and easily decide to perform one gender over the other, but rather that what is seen as an effect, is in fact the origin.^[13]

The idea of gender as performance aligns itself with the figure of the cyborg in its break from natural origins. Considering that gender is not constituted by the ‘self’ or a preexisting identity the link to the cyborg can in it its break from origins becomes apparent. More importantly, the cyborg makes explicit how gender is constantly reiterated and continually performed. The cyborg may seem to be beyond gender, but, as I will outline, in its manifestations in the Terminator series, it is constantly and forcefully making gender center stage.

[edit] Terminal Point: Gender in the Terminator Series

The Terminator series began in 1984 with the first inception of a cyborg killing machine sent back in time to eradicate (err terminate) Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) who would go onto to play a significant role in the human resistance after Judgment Day, the day that Skynet becomes self-aware and starts its war against humans. In the subsequent sequels and television series the time traveling narrative allows for constant re-writing of history, leading to the possibility of perpetual sequels, but nonetheless is important in how the cyborg is constantly reworked and used as both a site of fear but also potential desire.

In the original Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the monstrous other sent from the future. His built body as a symbol of the hyper-masculinization of the ‘80’s was well suited to this first film. His history as ‘Mr. Universe’ and the fact that his body as specifically made-up, as fundamentally structured and built works to codify him as performing a certain type of masculinity. This body is beyond any narrative purpose, the terminator is a machine with an organic façade placed over the metallic structure, the fact that this body is so strongly developed points to the very construction of gender itself.

It is not until Terminator II: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991) that these issues of gender dynamics become explicit. In its second inception the once ‘bad’ terminator comes back as a ‘good’ terminator to protect John Connor from the new more advanced T-1000, a.k.a. Liquidator (Robert Patrick). Schwarzenegger reprises his role as the strong male body and must do battle with the morphing Liquidator. Whereas, Schwarzenegger is corporeal and static in his gender, the Liquidator can morph into any sex it deems necessary. Bukatman picks up this distinction in her descriptions of Springer and Dery’s arguments^[14] and notes that it is the T-100’s hard body (both as hard metal and as Schwarzenegger) that must do battle with the effeminate T-1000 in order to “expunge the nightmare of masculine and industrial obsolescence”^[15]. I would extend this argument and actually suggest that it is both Linda Hamilton’s hard body along with Schwarzenegger’s that are reacting against the fluidity of gender and the threat that the cyborg presents against previously stable boundaries of male and female and self and other.

The third film, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Jonathan Mostow, 2003) breaks from the more hard-sci-fi serious tone of T2 and instead functions as a postmodern tongue-in-cheek action flick. Schwarzenegger once again takes up his role as the T-100 to counter the now even more advanced TX (or Terminatrix) (Kristanna Loken). The new ‘bad’ terminator is now female, and combines both the morphing technology of the Liquidator but also contains a hard metallic skeleton akin to the T-100. ‘Her’ gender is played up to be sexy and briefly after her introduction and being pulled over by a police officer she self-augments her breast size in order to impress the officer. Not to be outdone, Schwarzenegger’s cyborg plays with the gendering of his body by stealing the clothes of a male stripper, who is explicitly coded as gay. The leather/biker outfit of the terminator is momentarily questioned as masculine, especially when Schwarzenegger dawns the studded star shaped Elton John-esque stripper’s sunglasses. And yet, these brief moments in T3 are presented as comic relief in a film filled with postmodern humor. When the TX grabs Schwarzenegger’s crotch, the viewer gets the joke, he is a cyborg, not a being and therefore not a threat to a stable gender identity. In many ways, T3, in its lack of seriousness, is a reaction against the possible liberating elements of the cyborg.

The most recent terminator franchise Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008) returns to the hard sci-fi elements of the early T2. In this inception the terminator sent back to protect John Connor is the adolescent female Cameron (Summer Glau). Her exact capabilities have yet to be overtly explained but she seems to be a more advanced version of the T-100 without the morphing technologies of the TX and T-1000. This series, partly due to its medium, further blurs the distinction between cyborg and human. Cameron is constantly reminded that she is just a machine, and yet shows a self-awareness beyond that of many of the previous terminators. Throughout the series she continues to develop what it means to be human specifically from the outsider position. She also has to keep in check her femininity by suppressing the ‘masculine’ powers that her cyborg body allows. Her obviously sexed body and her assumed attachment to John Connor presents a possibly frightening human-machine love affair. Even Sarah, John’s mother, makes note of this when she demands that Cameron not walk around in her underwear. In the most recent episode, Cameron even applies nail polish in order to further sexualize her façade as a teenage girl. Where the other terminators mainly focused on what happens to the ‘human’ in the face of the cyborg, this series tends to focus on what the ‘cyborg’, and its subsequent gender-less self, may mean when it confronts the human.

In all these examples, I would like to stress how the representations of the cyborg are pitted against and inscribe upon what it means to be human and mostly how this identity is always framed within a specifically gendered identity. Where Harraway stresses that the cyborg is a symbol of the destruction of borders especially around essential sexual distinctions, and how Butler stresses that gender is the effect that hides itself as origin it is interesting and telling that in the several terminators that the cyborg-as-without-origin is necessarily gendered.

[edit] See Also

• We Are Cyborgs
• "The Gendered Cyborg: 'Borg Bodies and Questionable Agencies"

[edit] Works Cited

1. ↑ Haraway, D. J. 1991. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Routledge.
2. ↑ Bukatman, S. 1993. "Terminal Flesh." & "Terminal Resistance/Cyborg Acceptance." in Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Post-Modern Science Fiction. Durham: Duke UP.
3. ↑ Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
4. ↑ Haraway, D. J. 1991. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Routledge.150.
5. ↑ Haraway, D. J. 1991. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Routledge.149
6. ↑ Haraway, D. J. 1991. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Routledge.158
7. ↑ Soufoulis, Zoe. 2002. “Cyberquake: Harraway’s Manifesto” in Prefiguring Cyberculture. Ed. Darren Tofts. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.85
8. ↑ Haraway, D. J. 1991. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Routledge.177
9. ↑ Soufoulis, Zoe. 2002. “Cyberquake: Harraway’s Manifesto” in Prefiguring Cyberculture. Ed. Darren Tofts. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.86
10. ↑ Bukatman, S. 1993. "Terminal Flesh." & "Terminal Resistance/Cyborg Acceptance." in Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Post-Modern Science Fiction. Durham: Duke UP.246
11. ↑ Butler, Judith. 1993. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. Eds. Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, David Halperin. New York: Routledge. 307-320.
12. ↑ Butler, Judith. 1993. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. Eds. Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, David Halperin. New York: Routledge. 307-320. 308
13. ↑ Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.here
14. ↑ Bukatman, S. 1993. "Terminal Flesh." & "Terminal Resistance/Cyborg Acceptance." in Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Post-Modern Science Fiction. Durham: Duke UP304-307 here
15. ↑ Bukatman, S. 1993. "Terminal Flesh." & "Terminal Resistance/Cyborg Acceptance." in Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Post-Modern Science Fiction. Durham: Duke UP306