Communications in Humanities Research
- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences
Communications in Humanities Research
Vol. 14, 20 November 2023
Open
Access | Article
Behind the Poetics of the Female Asian Cyborg: A Techno-Orientalist Other
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Abstract
In 1985, Donna Haraway conceived a political myth of the cyborg, a cybernetic organism, hybrid of machine and organism, that refuses to be attributed to existing definitions used to explain the human body. Over the years, Haraway’s cyborg has continued to find itself in the center of academic and creative discourse. Given the prominence of Haraway’s model, in this paper, I will examine the cyborg poetics of two contemporary female Asian poets, Franny Choi and Sally Wen Mao, under the framework of Haraway’s cyborg. Both liken their self to cyborgs. Both take the perspective of cyborgs. Both are equally drawn to Haraway’s cybernetic dream. I will explain how Haraway’s cyborg is a fitting metaphor for the female identity and a relevant conduit for its expression, and how it facilitates the reckoning and rejection of the historically constituted female body. Finally, I will interrogate applicability of Haraway’s cyborg to the female Asian body by cross-referencing the cyborg with orientalism and techno-orientalism. I will argue for the exclusive nature of Haraway’s cyborg and its inadequacy in constituting a liberating space for the female Asian body.
Keywords
gender, poetry, orientalism
References
1. Haraway, Donna. (1991) A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist- Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. The Socialist Review, 149-181.
2. Choi, Franny. (2019) Soft Science. Alice James Books.
3. Choi, Franny., Mukomolova, Gala. (2019) Who Gets to Be Human? Poetry Foundation.
4. Bulter, Judith. (1993) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “sex” Philosophy. Philosophy Press, 236.
5. Olson, Gary. (1996) Writing, Literacy and Technology: Toward a Cyborg Writing. JAC, 5.
6. Harper, Mary Catherin. (1995) Incurably Alien Other: A Case for Feminist Cyborg Writers. Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 22, No. 3, 408.
7. Karremann, Isabel. (2004) ‘I’d Rather Be a Cyborg than a Goddess’: Reading the Cyborg Poetics of Eavan Boland. Nordic Irish Studies, Vol. 3, 122.
8. Cheung, Anne Anlin. (2018) Ornamentalism: A Feminist Theory for the Yellow Woman. Oxford University Press, 433.
9. Mao, Sally Wen. (2019) Oculus. Graywolf Press.
10. Ahmad, Nour. (2019) We are all cyborgs: How machines can be a feminist tool. IMS.
11. Trowby, Anna. (2021) Asian Female Robots on Screen: Subservience and Eroticisation. Varsity.
12. Pau, Kelly. (2021) The Original Cyborg: Asian Women & The Machinations of Power. Blood Knife.
13. Lin, Meiya Sparks. (2022) Towards A Cyborg Poetics: Race, Technology, and Desire in Asian American Science Fiction Poetry. Wellesley College, 10.
14. Roh, David S., Huang, Betsy., Niu, Greta A. (2016) Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media. Melus, Vol. 41, Issue 3, 217.
15. Gong, Chloe. (2019) Techno-Orientalism in Science Fiction.
Data Availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
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- Volume Title
- Proceedings of the International Conference on Global Politics and Socio-Humanities
- ISBN (Print)
- 978-1-83558-117-9
- ISBN (Online)
- 978-1-83558-118-6
- Published Date
- 20 November 2023
- Series
- Communications in Humanities Research
- ISSN (Print)
- 2753-7064
- ISSN (Online)
- 2753-7072
- DOI
- 10.54254/2753-7064/14/20230414
- Copyright
- 20 November 2023
- Open Access
- This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited