This is Ashley Yeung's Webliography!

Guiding Question:
4. Is a cyborg queer?
Discuss critical thinking on the intersections between sexuality and technology.

Miyake, Esperanza. "My, Is That Cyborg a Little Bit Queer?" The Journal of International Women's Studies 5.2 (2004): 53-61. Web. 13 Mar. 2011. < http://www.bridgew.edu/SOAS/jiws/Mar04/Miyake.pdf>.

Miyake’s work is to response the question of ‘Critically assess the importance, or otherwise, of Donna Haraway’s “manifesto” for early twenty-first century feminists’. She compares and contrasts different aspects of queer theory, such as sociological, ideological, political and ontological with Haraway’s ‘manifesto’. Interrelating both the notion of the ‘cyborg’ and ‘queer theory’, her work is to explore feminist issues concerning gender, sexuality, identity, representation and the body. At the end, she also argues how feminism might benefit from cyberqueer ideas in rethinking through these issues whilst being aware of its material ramifications. Meanwhile, she applies a film, called Bladerunner, in her essay. Miyake comments on the inherently queer nature of the cyborg replicants in the film Bladerunner. She explains, “The queer cyborg, with a hand on its (in)organic crotch, ‘rejoices’ its perverse status/strategy and confronts authority whilst challenging the Western quest for innocence and origin”. Miyake thinks that cyborg is a necessarily queer creature—a constant representation of heterosexual otherness. On a physical level, the body and the machine are literally becoming more and more integrated. Miyake also implies what Wilson observes. He observes that, “you could never be certain where the edges are. Multiplicity is another way of not being sure where people’s edges are, where their identity begins and ends”. The amalgamation of body and machine makes the queer cyborg monstrous, strong, sexy and powerful. This essay is appropriate and related to my guiding question, as this author is a supporter of cyborg is a queer, so that I can have this side of idea in responding the question.

Chess, Shira. "The C-Word: Queering the Cylons." Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy: Mission Accomplished or Mission Frakked Up? Chicago: Open Court, 2008. 87-94. Web. 11 Mar. 2011. < http://shiraland.com/Work/bsg_sample.pdf>.

The author defines the meaning of cyborgs by applying the ideas of Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto”, where Haraway defines cyborgs as creatures that are combination of organism and technology. Chess states that in many ways we are all cyborgs: glasses, braces, prosthetics, vaccinations, and plastic surgery are all ways that we combine ourselves with technology, blurring our own lines between ourselves and our machines. Chess looks deeply into the movie of Battlestar Galactic, she finds that the characters were obsessed with legitimizing forms of queer, and alternate reproductive practices. It enfolds homophobia into technophobia, and homosexual reproduction into technological production. In the movie of Battlestar Galactic, the Cylons are depicted as horrifying, cold-blooded killers, but simultaneously often melodramatic and pitiable. Within their human forms, they often attempt to lead real humans astray, most often tempting them through sexuality. The Cylons can be read as constant representations of queerness through their seductive technologies: they are the technoqueer. Technoqueer is about ways that fears of technologies overlap with fears of new forms of reproduction, and are embodied in cyborg figures. Moreover, Chess also explains the meaning of “queer”. “Queer” is a term that has been reappropriated by many philosophers and literary theorists. They often used to describe the “other” in a society. There is one important queer theorist, who is Judith Butler, discusses how gender, sex, and sexuality are used to normalize heterosexuality. According to Judith Butler, queerness in this configuration becomes the “other”. The reproductive methods of Cylons are portrayed as unholy and unnatural can be seen as representing larger fears. It is not only about queerness and fear of the “other”, but also about the technologies. Referring to the guiding question, I can take this paper as my reference since the author analyzed the Cylons of Battlestar Galactic in a logical sense. Furthermore, she inspires me that human fear not only about queerness and “other”, but also fear about technologies. Thus, I can discuss the question in different angles.

Rodrigo, Rochelle. "Cyborging: Rhetoric Beyond Donna Haraway and the Cyborg Manifesto." The Journal of Advancing Technology 2 (2005): 23-34. Web. 14 Mar. 2011. < https://alifedegree.com/resources/research/UAT_Journal_spring2005.pdf#page=23>.

In this essay, Rodrigo develops a better picture of how to imagine Haraway's physical connection between technology and the flesh, that physical connection that is so important to her political metaphor. He uses Elizabeth Grosz's theory of queer desire, and corporeal feminism to help explore Haraway's language of connection the terms, images and metaphors she uses to describe the interface between technology and organic life and her emphasis on the cyborg's role in pleasure and survival. He also argues Haraway's “cyborg” needs to become a verb, which describes the action. “Cyborg,” as a verb, demonstrates the connection, affinity, coupling, marriage, and coalition that are made between cyborgs. The cyborg act is rhetorical and it is situated. Furthermore, he also uses Mark Taylor's theory of complexity and network culture to help expand the concept to cyborg as a form of rhetorical invention. For this essay, it gives a new angle of defining the term of cyborg, as the author suggests cyborg could be a verb. It means the picture of cyborg will also be changed.

Lykke, Nina. "Are Cyborgs Queer?" Web. 13 Mar. 2011. < http://xoomer.virgilio.it/raccontarsi/presentazioni2006/LIANA.pdf>.

This paper is based on a research project on gender, cyborgs and new reproductive technologies. The title of this paper is “Are cyborgs queer?” Lykker discusses the biological determinism and feminist theory in the age of new reproductive technologies and reprogenetics. For the introduction, she introduces the biological determinist arguments are being used as political tools to legitimate the social inequalities and power differentials of gender, race, sexual preference etc. She also discusses how the cultural imaginary processes biological determinist thought figures in the wake of new reproductive technologies and reprogenetics. Firstly, she focuses on the cyborg and the queer as examples selected from the wealth of feminist theories that deconstruct biological determinism. The two figurations will serve as a frame of reference for her discussion of readjustment anti-biologist, feminist agendas. Secondly, Lykker looks at the desexualization and scientification of reproduction. She highlights two powerful trends. One is a tendency to conjure up blindly techno-optimistic and super-liberalistic utopias. Another one is a tendency to repatriarchalization and remobilizing of "Nature" as an argument against the excesses to which reprogenetics in the minds of many people today. Moreover, she asks how the different kinds of discourses, narratives and images, which the two trends stir up in the cultural imaginary, have a common denominator, in so far as both seem to establish contiguity between the cyborg and the queer. In conclusion, she returns to the discussion of feminist agendas and suggests that the queer cyborg may have something to say in response to the two equally problematic trends. This essay focuses on the new reproductive technologies and reprogenetics. It is useful for me to have a reference of the intersections between sexuality and technology.

Åsber, Cecilia. "Enter Cyborg: Tracing the Historiography and Ontological Turn of Feminist Technoscience Studies." International Journal of Feminist Technoscience 1.1 (2010): 1-25. Web. 13 Mar. 2011. < http://feministtechnoscience.se/wp/wp-content/uploads/enter-cyborg-international-journal-of-feminist-technoscience-v-1_1.pdf>.

The aim of this article is to provide a genealogical map of feminist entanglements with especially the biological sciences and with the body. In particular, the author aims to show how the figure of the cyborg in fact might be positioned as the first sign materializing and anticipating what we today might call the ontological turn within feminist theory and technoscience studies. The figure of the cyborg has become something of a mascot within feminist engagements with issues of technology and the identity formations of the modern human self. At last, Åsber states that modern society is entangled in complicated issues of life and healing, death and suffering, the cyborg was a tool for thinking through such complex issues. This article offers an accessible introduction to the feminist historiography of the cyborg and how it became a feminist tool for thinking nature and culture differently, so that I may have a better understanding in different aspects.