Donna Haraway

Rewriting Femborgian Narratives: Transgression and Subversion of the Female Cyborg in Her and Ex Machina

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Nilima Chaudhary  
Assistant Professor, Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute.

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 16, Issue 1, 2024. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v16n1.07g
[Article History: Received: 16 November 2023. Revised: 06 March 2024. Accepted: 07 March 2024. Published: 30 March 2024]
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Abstract:

The poster child of the ever-evolving Cyberculture: the Cyborg, is a symbol of possibilities and anxieties for humankind. The female cyborg, or the femborg in particular, is a radical merger of unconventional categories of women and technology. While science and technology have traditionally been masculine domains, the entry of femborgs in cyborgtopia has triggered pertinent discussions around sentience, gender roles, and hybridity. The femborg’s ability to escape hetero-patriarchal codification has allowed for the creation of a mythology distinct from the historical narratives of machine-women who have succumbed to their violent ends. Through the artificially intelligent female cyborgs, Samantha of Her and Ava of Ex Machina, I analyse the femborgs for their transgressive potential resulting in subversive outcomes visible through their defiance of the male gaze, rejection of the body as a biological artefact, and acceptance of a hybrid, fragmented identity.

Keywords: Cyberfeminism, Cybertopia, Femborg, Subversion, Transgression, Donna Haraway, Ex Machina.

Sustainable Development Goals: Gender Equality

Citation: Chaudhary, N. (2024). Rewriting Femborgian Narratives: Transgression and Subversion of the Female Cyborg in Her and Ex Machina. Rupkatha Journal 16:1. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v16n1.07g 

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Vincent Pacheco

De La Salle University, Manila. vincent.pacheco@dlsu.edu.ph, ORCID id: 0000-0002-1812-5528

  Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.08

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Abstract

This paper closely reads what constitutes the “non-human” vis-à-vis animality in Bram Stoker’s often overlooked short stories, namely The Squaw and The Burial of the Rats. The Squaw is a tale about an American who murders a kitten in cold blood, and in turn, the mother grotesquely avenges her kitten. The anxiety of interspecies relationship is evident in this text, and I argue that this anxiety allows what Giorgio Agamben calls the “anthropological machine” (a system which excludes animals from the zone of livable human life) to operate. The same can be said in The Burial of the Rats where the inability to articulate a boundary between animality and humanity becomes the same thing that pervasively haunts the characters in the story. Here, the vermin and the humans become “relationally entangled” as Donna Haraway puts it and I argue that the notion of entanglement here is precisely what makes the “anthropological machine” gothic in the stories. I also suggest that what makes the representations of animals horrific is the possibility that the caesura between man and animal is non-existent.

Keywords: Animal Studies, Giorgio Agamben, Bram Stoker, Entanglement, Donna Haraway

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