What of feminist futuristic narratives? (Or, at least, speculations that do not cast women as villians or sex objects or push them into the margins...once again, a recent example that commits all three of these crimes is The Lawnmower Man.)
Donna Haraway is one feminist theorist who plunges into the often unfriendly waters of science and technology. She calls for a new approach to both nature and the machine, an approach that does not objectify and manipulate, that instead engages (Ben-Tov 139-140). Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" attempts to reconceptualize the cyborg, recasting it as a feminist possibility for transforming and transcending sexist models of technology and oppressive patriarchal structures and traditions. "The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world," she argues, with "no origin story in the Western sense" (150). Without the story of the fall from innocence to explain its origins, the cyborg does not and cannot conform to any myths about an "original unity" or of "identification with nature in the Western sense" (Haraway 151). The cyborg is a boundary transgressor, destroying our precious dualities, and Haraway intends her myth to be about about "potent fusions and dangerous possibiliteis which progressive people might explore as one part of needed political work" (Haraway 154). In place of the binding identities to which we cling, Haraway offers ties of affinity so that a person's loyalties are not bound by racial, sexual, or class identities; instead, politics are based upon what one feels, not what one is (155-157). Haraway rejects the ecofeminist/Audre Lorde position that places organicism in direct opposition to the technological, arguing that such positions are restrictive (174). Haraway looks to writers like Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, Joanna Russ, and James Tiptree, Jr., for inspiration in theorizing the cyborg because their characters embody the difficulties of existing in high-tech worlds (173).
Sharona Ben-Tov is one writer who remains unimpressed by Haraway's cyborg manifesto. An important reason that the marriage of feminist theory and traditional science fiction has not created a major change in general science fiction and futuristic depictions of the world is because there has not been a potent reformation of the popular perception of technology, nor has there been a subversion of the valuation of rationality (137). While one might argue that this is exactly what Haraway aims to do, Ben-Tov argues that Haraway's efforts are unconvincing. Ben-Tov takes issue with Haraway's cyborg utopia because, for one thing, it rests upon the myth that our society is indeed totally technological, that modern life is fully technologically controlled (or controllable), and that we are all, as Haraway insists, cyborgs (143). Ben-Tov also believes that Haraway's cyborg does not account for the intangibles and inexplicables (i.e., spirituality, emotion) that make us human beings (144). Contrary to what Haraway claims, "technology is not our ontology" (Ben-Tov 144). Further, Ben-Tov insists that because technology is founded upon dualisms, transgressible barriers and fluidity are impossible within the structures of technology; in fact, Haraway's theory only reinforces dualities (144). In addition, the cyborg myth is not necessarily one that translates across cultures, not even in high-tech societies like Japan or Singapore: "Whose late twentieth century are we talking about?" wonders Ben-Tov (145). Science fiction remains culturally informed with specific cultural assumptions; perhaps other cultures have their own strategies for resistance (Ben-Tov 145). Ben-Tov concludes that we should claim the powers of technology not to mechanize ourselves: "The best image would be a happy, strong, well-nourished Somali child," not a cyborg (148-149). Ben-Tov seems to find Haraway's theory very much in keeping with over-eager Western tradition; it is self-indulgent and conservative, not progressive or transformative in the least.
While Ben-Tov raises some very important questions--certainly Western theorists cannot be too careful not to impose their assumptions and concerns upon the whole wide world--Haraway's cyborg myth seems more cautious and less enthusiastic than Ben-Tov's reading suggests. Haraway's manifesto is thought-provoking in that it calls into question the belief that technology must always and forever be masculine, threatening, and destructive. Continuing to cast it as patriarchal domain and insisting that change within it is impossible does not leave much hope that transformation is truly ever possible. Technology remains a human creation, and as such it has the potential to change and evolve as humanity does. Though it is not necessarily the answer to the world's ills--and not even just the ills of the Western world--Haraway's cyborg manifesto is a creative attempt to reframe the question of how women (and other marginalized peoples) can gain and keep their footing in the high-tech minefields of the real, present world and in speculative works of film, literature, and art.
Ben-Tov, Sharona. The Artificial Paradise. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995.
Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991.