In her 1985 essay “A Cyborg Manifesto”, Donna Haraway argues that the cyborg offers an avenue of escape for people subjugated within the “maze of dualisms” (475), such as gender and colonialism, whereby to reconfigure their identities into a “postmodern collective and personal self” (465). A cyborg, Haraway claims, is a “hybrid of machine and organism”, a being who incorporates technologies to create a new form of identity for itself (456). As a feminist, Haraway posits that women, by becoming cyborgs and reformulating their own identities, can overwrite the gendered inscriptions initially forced upon their bodies by the world’s patriarchal systems. By expressing themselves through beings that are neither male nor female, and adopting such fictional guises that work to express a self which is independent of gendered identity, women may generate a new and unfettered form of social recognition.
Compelling as this argument may be, however, Haraway’s “Manifesto” overlooks one key feature of the genre of science fiction (sf) that arguably undermines her claim. Susan Sontag, in her essay “The Imagination of Disaster” (1965) suggests that sf is a literary genre in which readers conventionally derive a “sense of superiority” over the freak, the non-human being, that poses a threat to humanity and is therefore condemned (1007). Thus, although gender binaries may be dissolved through the imagining of such cyborgs, science fiction texts, in birthing these superhuman creatures, create yet another self/Other dualism: the human/non-human binary. This essay will argue that dualisms are less easily dismantled than Haraway’s post-structuralist argument suggests. Rather, such post-gender discourses are impeded by the human tendency to categorise, and in the imaginative realm of science fiction, dualisms may not only prevail, but may, conversely, be amplified. Even in instances where the gender binary is transcended, I will suggest that another takes its place to ensure the continued ‘subalternation’ of women.
Strong self/Other, human/non-human, male/female binary parallels are often invoked in science fiction texts; particularly in arguments concerning the problematic definition of humanity. These arguments attempt to explicate the complexity of the idea of ‘humanness’, often by employing familiar social archetypes that in turn perpetuate the gender divide. This, in turn, contradicts Haraway’s proposition that fiction may be used as a platform for the disenfranchised to reconstruct new identities and liberate themselves from various binaries.
Both Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and William Gibson’s Neuromancer illustrate the way in which the sf genre contains certain conventions that challenge Haraway’s “Manifesto”. The former text explores the complicated relationship between human and android through the human protagonist’s interactions with his android quarries. Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who tracks and retires rogue androids, struggles to reconcile his own sympathetic emotions towards the androids he must destroy. Philip K. Dick uses the gender binary to highlight and accentuate the difference between Rick and his android adversaries; the most prominent among the latter group is Rachael Rosen, a beautiful female android to whom Rick has romantic attachments. This, as Rick observes, is a perplexing situation as he finds himself “emotionally reacting” to female androids—particularly those he finds “pretty”—despite “knowing intellectually” that they are only inorganic machines (75). The resultant dilemma distorts Rick’s initially clear-cut perception of androids as non-human—and therefore open—targets. Paradoxically, according to the Voigt-Kampff test, Rick’s ability to empathise is precisely what defines him as a human being, yet his feelings for Rachael mark him as “unnatural” (109) or less human than he was before, as if the once clear-cut barrier between androids and humanity has been blurred by Rick’s transgression. Through Rick and Rachael’s relationship, Dick problematises the claim that empathy is an exclusive emotion that can only be exchanged between human beings. If Rick were to love an android, and thus lose the ability to destroy her as he has other androids, he would be acknowledging that androids can, to some degree, be perceived and treated as human beings. Conversely, Rick might also be considered to have lost some measure of his own humanity if he decides to act on his “unnatural” impulses. In either case, the line between humans and androids is blurred.
The novel ultimately resolves the above conundrum through a corresponding resolution of Rick’s tumultuous, romantic relationship with Rachael, whom he comes to treat as a sexual object and eventually discards. In exploring the debate on the fundamental identity of the human species, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? perpetuates and reinforces both the gender binary and the self/Other binary. The novel shows that androids can and should be similarly used and subsequently disposed. Rick realises that androids do have, in their own way, lives of their own: subpar “electric” lives that are undeniably different from human lives (181). This gives Rick ethical license to continue destroying rogue androids, which are considered threats to mankind. Rick’s later cruel treatment of Rachael simultaneously emphasises the domination of human over android and perpetuates the gender binary. In having sex with Rachael and metaphorically killing her, Rick implements the cold-hearted solution suggested to him by fellow bounty hunter Phil Resch, that love is really just “another name for sex” (110). Rick treats Rachael as merely a tool to fulfil his sexual desires. His feelings for Rachael are purely physical, and he will never be able to connect with Rachael on a deeper level because she is only an android, attractive only for her female body and incapable of forming an emotional bond. Rachael’s emotional deadness is contrasted with her otherwise compelling physical assets, and it is clear that her role as a sexual object is fulfilled once Rick has satisfied his desires and promptly abandons her. That Rick first entertains the thought that love might flourish between a human and an android demonstrates that he had confused love and empathy with sexual attraction, and had as a result erroneously believed that androids could be considered equal to humans. The “pretty” androids that Rick hesitates to retire, including Rachael Rosen and the performer Luba Luft, are pitiful to him precisely because of their physical attractiveness and sexual allure.
The novel’s argument that mankind must continue preserving its species whilst destroying other threatening, and often inferior life forms is driven home through Rick’s story. However, his story also invokes the subordinate position of women to men. Not only is Rachael an electric substitute for Rick’s human wife, Iran, and a sexual tool; Iran too is relegated to an inferior and servile position. In the novel, Rick quarrels with Iran and eventually triumphs by using the mood organ on her. By adjusting her console, he forces her into a state of “pleased acknowledgement of husband’s superior wisdom in all matters” (10). This act suggests that the mood organ—that such a common household appliance would even have such an option—is itself a patriarchal tool. Rick’s oppressive approach to his relationships with women is also expressed in an outwardly violent manner with Rachael, whom he figuratively murders after sexually exploiting her. In this way, Rick enacts the patriarchal archetype of the working husband whose interactions with his domestic wife are strained—to the point of betrayal—due to his career. Rachael further articulates this by pointing out that Rick loves “the goat, then [his] wife, then [Rachael, his extramarital partner]” (152). The goat, which is Rick’s beloved pet, is a status symbol in the novel’s desolate world that is devoid of organic animals. It is the contemporary equivalent of material assets used often as badges of success. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is thus perhaps a hyperbolised science fiction analogue of Dick’s modern society, in which a man’s status and career are considered of superior importance to his personal relationships, or more specially his relationship with his wife. Amidst such social conventions, women are thus relegated to servile or domestic roles, as evidenced by Iran the housewife. In Rachael’s case she is almost a prostitute, employed as an alternative—as opposed to the quarrelsome and generally unappealing wife, Iran—for satisfying Rick’s sexual needs.
Rachael, however, attempts to use this position to her advantage, knowing that Rick “won’t be able to retire anymore androids” after developing an attachment to her (152). By acting as a sort of Mata Hari, Rachael wrestles for a measure of feminine agency amidst the patriarchal forces of her society. However, as Rick eventually leaves Rachael and returns to his wife, Rachael’s endeavour to position androids on an equal footing with humans fails alongside her efforts to seduce Rick and supplant Iran as his lover. Overall, the romantic struggle that plays out is laced with philosophical implications, and Dick ultimately employs the character of the jealous female lover, or temptress, as a metaphor for the androids’ own futile attempts to vindicate themselves of their status as inferior, subhuman beings. Rick’s subsequent triumph over sexual temptation, which is signalled by his climactic destruction of Rachael’s double, Pris Stratton, coincides with the novel’s own victorious conclusion that mankind’s identity as a species may prevail vis-à-vis and in spite of the existential threat of intelligent android life forms. Appropriately, the novel ends with a return to the initial (patriarchal) status quo when Rick returns to his familiar domestic life and finds Iran dutifully waiting for him. It can therefore be observed from Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? that the typical sf discourse concerning the identity of humanity as a species might employ and hence reinforce, rather than reinvent, gender dualisms.
Haraway’s vision that individual identities may eventually be self-constructed and immune to binaries is, in addition, challenged by another archetypal motif in sf: the often alienated and eroticised female superhuman. In William Gibson’s Neuromancer, it may seem that Molly, the cyborg, transcends gender binaries that typically cast the female as weak. However, Molly’s highly sexualised feminine body causes her to fall under yet another existing gendered category, that of the femme fatale. Neuromancer features another romance between human and machine, Case and Molly, in which the woman assumes the liminal role of the semi-human. Known as a “meat puppet”, Molly possesses several bodily enhancements, including surgically implanted glasses that improve her vision and retractable claws that improve her capabilities as a mercenary (Gibson 147). She aids Case as they, following the orders of their mysterious super-AI employer Wintermute, infiltrate the Tessier-Ashpool residence to secure a password that would allow Wintermute to obtain superconsciousness. The Tessier-Ashpool residence is heavily guarded, and it falls to Molly to defeat Hideo, ninja bodyguard of the Lady 3Jane Tessier-Ashpool. As the novel reaches its climax, Molly’s deadliness is rendered masculine as she is described as representing “the whole lineage” of “every bad-ass [male] hero” (213). It may first seem that Molly, as cyborg, is empowered as she has overthrown what Haraway calls the hierarchical phallogocentrism of the West that designates femininity the position of weakness (469). Molly now assumes a masculine role and unlike Rachael, whose sexual allure is stigmatised as false and debasing, Molly’s superhuman characteristics are glorified and accentuated.
However, in addition to her extraordinary (“masculine”) talents, Molly’s feminine body is highly sexualised. Her abilities are closely associated with her sexual identity. Provocatively caricatured by her nemesis Riviera, Molly is depicted with breasts “that were too large” and an “impossibly narrow waist” in contrast to Case, who has nothing “worthy of parody” (209). The idea that Case is exempt from any form of Riviera’s physical satire, despite being a cyborg of sorts and being exceedingly adept at computer hacking, suggests that masculine superhuman-ness is perhaps less unusual, or even normal, compared to feminine superhuman-ness, which is abnormal. In contrast, Riviera taunts Molly not by disparaging her skills as an assassin, but by exaggerating and lampooning her femininity. While this scene might simply function as a bit of comic relief, the fact that Molly’s feminine traits can be perceived to be at odds with her talent as a mercenary unearths an underlying assumption latent within the text: the female individual must necessarily assume a masculine identity—the “bad-ass hero”’, as opposed to the bad-ass heroine—to be recognised as professionally competent. The female superhuman, which Molly embodies and represents in Neuromancer, therefore functions as both ‘hero’ and erotic object.
While Molly’s heightened prowess and sexual dominance – for it is she who initiates sexual relations with Case (32) – defies gender conventions, she is eventually trapped in another existing gendered category: Molly recalls images of the ‘spider woman’ or the femme fatale, whose heightened authority is accompanied by an accentuated sexuality. That these gender stereotypes have seeped into sf discourse therefore makes Haraway’s vision particularly difficult to materialise, as feminist sf writers must hence work doubly hard to dislodge conventions that link female cyborgs to the concept of the objectified sexual Other.
Success in writing Haraway’s version of the cyborg into existence therefore depends on how well the abovementioned obstacles are tackled. Perhaps at this point, it is appropriate to examine a feminist writer whom Haraway specifically refers to as a fellow “theorist of cyborgs”—Octavia Butler (467). Butler’s science fiction novel Dawn tells of a post-apocalyptic world where aliens, known as the Oankali, have colonised the human species. The reluctant protagonist of this story, Lilith, is a cyborg whose mind and body have been genetically altered by the biologically superior Oankali, increasing both her resemblance to the Oankali and her ability to communicate with them. Using these abilities, Lilith must teach the remaining survivors of the apocalypse to live on a resuscitated Earth. Haraway argues that as a black woman, and now as a cyborg, Lilith has transgressed gender and racial boundaries by being a mediator for the “transformation of humanity through genetic exchange with extra-terrestrial [beings]” (473). As a woman, Lilith’s newfound dominance over the rest of humanity, as it is gradually reborn with the help of the Oankali, rewrites the “founding myth of original wholeness” (470); where Woman is neither the perpetuator of sin as Eve was at the Fall, nor the secondary sex formed to serve Man, as Eve was to Adam. The self, Haraway argues, “is the One who is not dominated” (471). Butler reverses power dynamics through the alternation of Lilith’s body. The latter’s body is physically superior and no longer weakened by racial or gender discrimination. Seemingly, Butler constructs a fictional cyborg through whom the feminist mission for gender equality can be championed.
Butler, perhaps aware of how closely gender operates as a function of ‘humanness’, shrewdly invents a new form of sexual intercourse that re-shapes conventional gender roles. The abnormality of having a female leader, who is strong enough to defeat a man in combat, is used as the basis of the accusation that Lilith is not human, since “only a man can fight [the way she does]” (Butler 147). Yet, these accusations are not addressed by a counterargument that attempts to prove that Lilith is still a woman, and therefore human. Rather, the Oankali have the rest of the humans experience ‘abnormal’ sexual intercourse through the ooloi—Oankali of neutral sex – thus, in a sense, ‘queering’ the rest of humanity. By initiating a mass deviation from gender conventions, Butler levels the playing field by turning all of mankind into cyborgs, or those who use the ooloi as sexual apparatus, whilst empowering Lilith, who was once subjugated by those conventions. This therefore appears to be a step towards what Haraway terms “cyborg imagery”, in which colonised peoples have “explained [their] bodies and [their] tools to [themselves]” (475), as it reconfigures oppressive social conventions and postulates a new way of structuring society.
However, a closer examination of how Lilith gains liberation from mankind’s patriarchal structures reveals that in exchange, she is not only subject to a new colonial master, the Oankali, but has also fallen prey to sf conventions that form self/Other binaries antagonistic to Haraway’s ideological aim. In tracing Lilith’s transformation from human to cyborg, Butler’s novel also leads readers to witness the dawn of a new superhuman being with whom we can no longer identify. And the process of alienating these superhuman beings is ultimately detrimental to the “Manifesto's” vindicating enterprise. Perhaps one of the novel’s most disconcerting scenes is the incident in which Lilith suddenly becomes aware of the queerness of her sexual relations with Joseph and Nikanj, her human beloved and ooloi partner respectively. Arriving at the precipice of another sexual encounter with Nikanj, Lilith is stunned, “wondering how she had lost her horror for such a being”; yet her horror is mingled, strangely and dissonantly, with her “perverse eagerness” for the pleasure that ooloi sex can give her (Butler 191).
The text therefore gestures towards a sexual fantasy that at best titillates, and at worst disgusts, with its practical foreignness. Both emotions, as they do in Lilith, can occur in readers concurrently, and also discordantly. Sontag’s study of sf in her essay “The Imagination of Disaster” can perhaps serve to unravel this cognitive knot. In creating these superhuman cyborgs, science fiction texts conventionally appeal to the “undeniable pleasure” gained from “looking at freaks” (1007). The scene described above is thus once instance where readers derive such satisfaction from a voyeuristic reading of Lilith’s sex act; where the scene’s fictional element legitimises the fantasies that it evokes whilst distancing readers, thereby enabling them simultaneously to revile Lilith’s descent into abnormality while sharing vicariously in its pleasures. Through the condemnation of Lilith—for she is evidently beyond the point of return, having “lost her horror” for the hideous Oankali—readers are able to feel reassured of their normality, their unquestioned humanness. The cyborg Other, as opposed to the human self, has therefore become the scapegoat upon whom readers pin their fears about the fragility of humanity, whilst enabling readers to affirm themselves.
While Butler’s cyborg invention circumvents certain restrictive boundaries with regard to gender, Lilith must conform to yet another system of configuration. She is re-colonised, forced to participate in “unnatural” relations with her Oankali captors, and in so doing undergoes a process of irrevocable transformation. Lilith’s foreignness to both male and female readers of Dawn does not serve to inspire feminist claims to independence, but rather invites alienation in a devastatingly literal manner. Lilith is basically used as a reproductive tool by the Oankali and is forced, once again, to capitulate to traditional gender roles that confine women to the home. Ironically, Butler fails to escape the sf trope that use female bodies as representatives of the sexual and existential Other. Rather, by attempting to use familiar narrative devices and modes of discourse to champion her feminist agenda—these devices having originated from a patriarchal worldview—Butler therefore opens her cyborg creations to readers’ re-interpretations of the text. Lilith cannot serve, paradoxically, as both an argumentative tool for the preservation of humanity as we know it—for the sf text conventionally stirs feelings of panic at the threat of extinction – and as a welcomed harbinger of a new kind of post-gendered existence.
As mankind progresses towards a post-gendered or post-human world, the erasure of humanity, or at least a substantial rewiring of its present structures, is inevitable. Although this prospect may seem appealing to Haraway, the human fear of the unknown so conventionally explored through sf is powerful enough to grip all readers, regardless of their present social positions. Writers of colonised groups can attempt to “[seize] the tools to mark the world that marked them as other” (Haraway 469). However, blocking all feelings of Otherness towards alien creatures – beings that have terrorised cultural imaginations since the beginnings of sf—is a nearly insurmountable task. Thus, for instance, although Ursula K. Le Guin almost succeeds in creating an immersive post-gendered world in her novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, her protagonist Genly Ai cannot help but notice how terrifyingly estranged he has become from his home world. “They all looked strange to me ... well as I knew them”, Genly remarks (296). While Le Guin has effectively marked gendered humanity – as opposed to the non-gendered Gethenians – as ‘other’, the Gethenians fundamentally remain fictional people; they are foreign beings, confined within the parameters of science fiction, imagined into existence for the thrill of creating a faux terror that serves, ultimately, to lull us into the comfort of familiar reality.
Although Haraway’s “Manifesto” is an appealing argument for the vindication of oppressed groups, its idealised vision of the cyborg is warped by sf conventions that turn non-human beings into enthrallingly frightening creatures, ‘freaks’, that constitute part of the science fiction experience; a pleasurable exercise that reinforces self/Other dualisms rather than deconstructing them, providing an existential comfort, an anodyne, against foreign threats to individual identity. Perhaps, then, the truly transcendent cyborgs must exist outside the imaginative dimensions of fiction, or at least at the borders, where the premises for existence depend not on the needs and desires of the audience, but on the personal aspirations of the self; now liberated from disenfranchisement and given a voice (Spivak 252).
Michele is a fourth year English literature major at NUS. She considers herself very fortunate to be able to blend her personal interests with her academic pursuits, and believes that mainstream literature is equally, if not more deserving of critical attention. Her academic interests fall largely within the areas of fantasy/sf, medieval literature, film theory, and post-colonial theory. She is currently engaged in research concerning the overlaps between fantasy and post-colonialist writing, working on a hunch that both genres are more closely related than they may seem.
Works Cited
Butler, Octavia E. Dawn. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1989. Print.
Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? London: Harper Collins Publisher, 1997. Print. Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: The Berkeley Publishing Group, 1984. Print.
Haraway, Donna J. “A Cyborg Manifesto.” Science Fiction: Stories and Contexts. Ed. Heather Masrir.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 456-475. Print.
Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: The Berkeley Publishing Group, 1969. Print. Sontag, Susan. “The Imagination of Disaster.” Science Fiction: Stories and Contexts. Ed. Heather Masri.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 1002-1014. Print. Spivak, Gayatri. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Reflections on the History of an India: Can the Subaltern
Speak? Ed. Rosalind C. Morris. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. 237-292. Print.