Thanks to my classmates Susanne and Val for your posts on Cyborg Feminism. It’s not just about the different ways that male and female cyborgs are popularly portrayed, it is the general questioning of power structures outside of male and female. Val linked to an article (Feminism and Cyberculture) which said “information technology often presents itself to us as potentially liberating when in fact our actual interactions with it often reinforce conventional social structures of domination”.
Carl Silvio Refiguring the Radical Cyborg in Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell
Dr Glabau’s you tube talk linked from Susanne’s post then spoke about the actor network theory where it’s not just humans in a technological system but also non human laborers, who contribute example animals in the food chain. Some animals are doing the work, some enjoying the technology, some exploited in that network. One of the questions cyborg feminism asks is who is creating these technologies, to what end, who is receiving opportunity or repression? Dr Glabau asks us to consider where are the voices of all beings represented in the network so that every voice is heard in designing technologies for the future. The motivation for implementing technology shouldn’t be just instrumental and economic. It’s not that straightforward.