Screen bound/skin bound :the politics of embodiment in the posthuman age

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The end of the second millennium saw a sudden return to corporeality, especially withinfeminist scholarship, where embodiment and issues surrounding the body were, for thefirst time, made explicit. This study examines the corporeal body in relation totechnology and the impact that newly emerging virtual technologies have on ourunderstanding of the body, not only through examining representations of thetechnologically modified body, but also by exploring how contemporary culturalpractices produce corporeal bodies that view themselves as somehow integrated withtechnology. It focuses on the material artefacts of contemporary culture in relation toexplicitly virtual technologies, both arguing for a return to corporeality and contesting thepervasive trope of disembodiment that characterises so-called 'posthuman age.This study thus takes one of the most popular metaphors for the relationship between thecorporeal body and technology as its starting point, namely Donna Haraway's cyborgfigures. Following the publication of Haraway's 'A Manifesto for Cyborgs (1985), thefemale cyborg became an icon of emancipation for many feminist scholars, who utilisedHaraway's cyborg discourse as a means of discussing the cultural practices that bothconstruct and limit female gendered identity. Through closely examining the metaphor ofHaraway's cyborg figures in relation to cultural representations of female cyborg bodies,this study argues that, ultimately, the metaphor of the cyborg is inherently neitherchallenging nor liberating. It then examines the failure of the cyborg as an icon ofpostgenderedness in terms of its negation of the corporeal, as cyborg figuresparadoxically only strengthen the same Cartesian dualism Haraway's cyborg discourseattempts to deconstruct. It explores representations of three female cyborg figures foundin contemporary popular culture to illustrate how the cyborg body's negation of thecorporeal only results in the reiteration of conventional gendered stereotypes, rather thanliberation from oppressive gendered practices.Finally, this study examines the crucial interplay between the corporeal and thetechnological, not only when speaking of more imaginary cyborg configurations and tropes, but also when speaking of the physical reality of lived bodies and embodiedexperiences. By examining the increasingly embodied nature of cyberspace, this studyexplores possible alternatives to the figure of the hypersexualised and disembodiedcyborg, through investigating new figurations with which to describe the embodiedpostmodern subject and his/her dependence on technology. Since the central task for afeminist ethics of embodiment would be grounded in the project of representing thefemale body, in such a way that it constructs autonomous women's representationswithout falling prey to patriarchal, stereotypical or estranging images of women's bodies,this study concludes with more useful methods of representing the corporeal body inrelation to virtual technology through an appeal to an ethics of embodiment.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University