The Biopolitics of Gender in Science Fiction: Feminism and Female Machines (Routledge Studies in Speculative Fiction)

Questioning essentialist forms of feminist discourse, this work develops an innovative approach to gender and feminist theory by drawing together the work of key feminist and gender theorists, such as Judith Butler and Donna Haraway, and the biopolitical philosophy of Giorgio Agamben and Gilles Deleuze. By analysing representations of the female cyborg figure, the gynoid, in science fiction literature, television, film and videogames, the work acknowledges its normative and subversive properties while also calling for a new feminist politics of selfhood and autonomy implied by the posthuman qualities of the female machine. Questioning essentialist forms of feminist discourse, this work develops an innovative approach to gender and feminist theory by drawing together the work of key feminist and gender theorists, such as Judith Butler and Donna Haraway, and the biopolitical Cover 1 Endorsement 2 Half Title 4 Series Information 5 Title Page 6 Copyright Page 7 Table of contents 8 Figures 9 Acknowledgements 10 Introduction: Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid in Science Fiction 12 Binaries, Uncertainties, Selfhood 15 Biopower and Bare Life: New Conceptualisations of Gender 18 The Battle of Sexes 21 On Cyborgs and Gynoids 23 Becoming-Woman, Becoming-Gynoid 25 On Gynoids, Interfaces and the Disruptive Nature of Play 30 1 Woman or Womankind? Signatures, Suspension and Bare Life in Feminism and Science Fiction 32 The Suspended Woman 35 Women and/as Bare Life 39 On Paradigms, Signatures and Handmaids 41 Oikonomia in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy 47 2 Removing/Reprogramming the Masculine – The Homo Sacer in the Feminist Dis/Utopia 54 Removing the Masculine 56 Reprogramming the Masculine 59 Female Worlds and Female Men 63 Symbolic Mothers: Copies without Origins 66 3 “You can alter our physiology, but you cannot change our nature”: The Girl in the Machine 71 Female Borg versus the Posthuman Collective 75 The Female Cyborg as Assemblage 79 Becoming-Woman, Becoming-Gynoid 83 4 Female Machines and Female Flesh – Women and/as Automata 90 Gynoids: Some Assembly Required 91 Authenticity and Performance in C.L. Moore’s “No Woman Born” 95 5 “Formally a correct response. But simulated” – Scoring Women on the Voight-Kampff Scale 101 6 Profane Simulations – Home and Ruin in the Fallout Games 113 Use and Play, Sacred and Profane 116 The Value of Junk 118 Hiding from the Fallout: Oikonomia, the Home and the Vault 123 7 Becoming and Avatar – Playing as Cyborgs among Gynoids in the Deus Ex Games 129 Deus Ex Machina: Playing at the Threshold 132 Conclusion: Virtual Wives and Autonomous Selves – Towards a Politics of Becoming-Gynoid 143 Bibliography 154 Index 161 "This work develops an innovative approach to gender and feminist theory by drawing together the work of key feminist and gender theorists, such as Judith Butler and Donna Haraway, and the biopolitical philosophy of Giorgio Agamben and Gilles Deleuze"-- Provided by publisher