CRITICAL ANNOTATED WEBLIOGRAPHY

Anne Balsamo claims that ‘Cyborgs are hybrid entities that are neither wholly technological nor completely organic, which means that the cyborg has the potential not only to disrupt persistent dualisms that set the natural body in opposition to the technologically recrafted body, but also to refashion our thinking. In short, cyborg is still a transgressive figure’[1] . The major resource that I used to locate sources was the search engine Google, especially the Google Scholar.

Reading Cybogs, writing Feminism is one of the charters of Technologies of the Gender Body. It is a useful article which was written by Anne Marie Balsamo, the writer of the above argument. This article begins with a review of famous cyborgs in popular culture. Balsamo states that “Cyborg bodies are definitionally transgressive of the dominant culture order, not so much because of their ‘constructed’ nature, but rather because of indeterminacy of their hybrid design”[2]. The statement strongly points out that the ‘hybrid design’ is an important reason for the cyborg’s transgressive figure. Cyborg also provides a framework for studying gender identity. The article reread Michel Foucault through various feminist studies of the historical construction of the gendered body. Then, in the second part of the article she draws on Norbert Wiender’s theory of cybernetics and Marshall Mcluhan’s media analysis to discuss the role of the female body in one well-known account of the postmodern body. And finally, she concludes with a discussion of a range of feminist scholarship on the body that establishes the importance of maintaining an emphasis on the notion of a material body by promoting a gendered body that has been not simply material but rather a hybrid construction of materiality and discourse. Balsamo also discusses works by Donna Haraway, Ruth Bleier, and Paula Treichler, who in different ways investigate how the material female body is actually constructed by and within discourse to support the argument.

In Rene Munnik’s Donna Haraway: Cyborgs for earthly Survival?, she first discusses Donna Jeanne Haraway’s article, which entitled “Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s”. Haraway provides a definition of cyborg, which is “a bionic being, partly human and partly robot—a being in which the border between nature and culture is blurred in a body that mingles flesh and titanium”[3]. The blurred boundaries for the hybrid design of cyborg made it become transgressive. By the same time, Haraway proposes that people should imagine cyborgs as beings that bourdaries, bastardizations of humans and technology, which was already the view of Clynes, Kline, and Minsky[4]. After that Rene Munnik mentioned cyborgs are transgressive of boundaries, which corrupt beings and chimerical monsters. And Cyborgs are not unambiguously identifiable as “man” or “woman,” “nature” or “culture”, “human” or “machine”. This point was expressed with reference to language. Finally she discusses some political analysis of Haraway’s article. This article is useful for answering the guiding question, as the writer discuss transgressive boundaries of cyborg by analysis Donna Haraway’s earlier article.

Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk The book first discuss what a cyborg is and which is clear that an overriding theme in the writings of William Gibson, McHale, Csicsery-Ronay and a number of contributions to McCaffrey is the assumption that the boundaries between subjects, their bodies and the ‘outside world’ are being radically reconfigured[5]. That means the analytical categories derive from the fundamental division between technology and nature, are in danger of dissolving, the categories of the biological, the technological, the natural, the artificial and the human are beginning to blur. These contributions strongly support the argument which I choose for this assignment. The author argues that it is the extent and complexity of the changes from the mainstreaming of cosmetic surgery, also rise of biotechnology, genetic engineering and nanotechnology, which have led some to predict that the next generation could well be the last of ‘pure’ humans. And something worried the author is that if there is an increasing acceptance of cosmetic surgery by consumers and other associated technological interventions to modify the body, over the last decade are at all indicative of future trends, then the next 50 years will see even more radical plastic surgery, computer-chip brain implants and gene splicing become routine[6]. The transformation of body was usually being considered when discussing the topic of cyborg and its transgressive figure.

In Robbie Davis-Floyd and Joseph Dumit’s Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots Cyborg Babies is an exploration of the increasingly pervasive role of technology in how children are brought into and raised in our society. From fetuses scanned ultrasonically to computer hackers in daycare, contemporary children are being rendered cyborg by their immersion in technoculture. Besides, a range of perspectives are heard, from cultural anthropologists to social critics, as they offer cutting-edge critiques and personal narratives of how, as we are faced with reproductive choices connected directly with technologies. The writers try to discuss some of the ways in which North American women may use the “transgressed boundaries and potent fusions” of ultrasound’s cybory fetus to reflect on and rework their experiences of pregnancy[7]. The article about cybory babies shows that the new technology may reflect the transgressive figure of cyborgs, either using the technology to reproduce baby, or a man become pregnancy. Nowadays, we often have trouble gaining perspective on our own cultural co-dependency with these similar technologies.

Cyborg As Cyberbody is an article similarly to ‘Cyborg Babies’, Chritiane Paul points out that the fusion of man and machine has reached new level today. We must be aware that in this information age or digital networked society, the body and the identity have become a much-discussed topic. Some conflicting ideas, such as man vs. machine and its relation to evolution vs. design was presented in the article. Besides, the information presented which proved to be good writing material for addressing the issue of boundaries and the whole concept of identity; it is because interaction between man and machine with our ever increasing dependency on these technological devices is responsible for dissolving the very borders which separate machines from humans. And hence, thinking whether computers are designed for helping us or making us closer to either becoming or have already to a certain extent become cyborys. Here we also need to consider the transgressive boundaries of man and machine body which is still confusing people.

In Computers and the Communication of Gender, Lawley uses the essay to discuss the topics of computer and gender. She tries to examine the ways in which our definitions of “woman” and “man” are shifting in the new communication environment. It is possible to use new theoretical perspectives on the shifting boundaries of gender definitions to rethink a previously deterministic view of the effect of new technologies on society, and particularly the effect of those technologies on women[8]. She points out that the computerized communication systems allow women to escape boundaries and categories which have constrained activities and their identities in the past. In Lawley’s essay, few authors have been chosen to share Haraway’s vision of a re-gendered world based on the merging of biology and technology. It can be seen, gender is one of the aspects that one may consider when discuss cyborg.

All of the sources collated are in agreement with Anne Balsamo’s statement that cyborg is still a transgressive figure, because they are hybrids of machine and organism, which blur its boundary.

NOTES:
[1] Anne Marie Balsamo, “Reading Cybogs, writing Feminism,” in Technologies of the Gender Body, 1996, p.11. Google books online, retrieved 28 February 2009, < id="lkr11mXPYKEC&printsec=" hl="zh-TW">.
[2] ibid.
[3] Rene Munnik, “Donna Haraway: Cyborgs for earthly Survival?,” in American Philosophy of technology, 2001, p.95. Google books online, retrieved 28 February 2009, .
[4] ibid., p.103.
[5] Mike Featherstone, Roger Burrows, Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk, 1995, p.3. Google books online, retrieved 28 February 2009, < id="wjtm5I1XUd8C&hl=">.
[6] ibid., p.4.
[7] Robbie Davis-Floyd, Joseph Dumit, Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots, 1998, p.107. Google books online, retrieved 28 February 2009, < id="jHyMOknhegEC&printsec=" hl="zh-TW#PPA1941,M1">.
[8] Elizabeth Lane Lawley, Computers and the Communication of Gender, 1993, Google books online, retrieved 1 March 2009, <>.

Webliography:

Anne Marie Balsamo, “Reading Cybogs, writing Feminism,” in Technologies of the Gender Body, 1996, Google books online, retrieved 28 February 2009, http://books.google.com/books?id=lkr11mXPYKEC&printsec=frontcover&hl=zh-TW

Elizabeth Lane Lawley, Computers and the Communication of Gender, 1993, Google books online, retrieved 1 March 2009, http://www.itcs.com/elawley/gender.html

Mike Featherstone, Roger Burrows, Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk, 1995, Google books online, retrieved 28 February 2009, http://books.google.com/books?id=wjtm5I1XUd8C&hl=zh-TW

Rene Munnik, “Donna Haraway: Cyborgs for earthly Survival?,” in American Philosophy of technology, 2001, Google books online, retrieved 28 February 2009, http://books.google.com/books?hl=zh-TW&lr=&id=nnBLgPN1wYoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA95&dq=cyborgs+is+a+transgressive+figure&ots=G6nCNDw2nU&sig=-N16fh7DbvdXkZdDeqxRFgoYaXg#PPA95,M1

Robbie Davis-Floyd, Joseph Dumit, Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots, 1998, Google books online, retrieved 28 February 2009, http://books.google.com/books?id=jHyMOknhegEC&printsec=frontcover&hl=zh-TW#PPA1941,M1