Cyborg Worlds: queer hybridities and Haraway in 21st century science

The focus of the project will be an examination of 21st century science fiction and the critical engagement between SF and culture, identity and technology. In A Cyborg Manifesto (1991), Donna Haraway said that "a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints." (Haraway 1991; 154). Reading from a Harawayan perspective, to what extent does 21st century science fiction represent the 'cyborg worlds' she envisioned in the late 20th century and to what extent is 'the cyborg' still a relevant image to 21st century writers? This will be answered by examining the sympoiesis between animal/human/technology and the potential within non/human or otherwise hybrid embodiments for critical engagement with gender, race and sexuality. This will include a postcolonial, ecological and transgender reading of Tentacle by Rita Indiana and an exploration of black identity, intersex identity and prosthesis in An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon. This research seeks to support the argument that queer and colonial voices have been said to embrace the non/human or monstrous as a way of writing embodiment and identity outside of white, patriarchal and heteronormative modes where categories of humanity are often denied.

My primary engagements will be with inhuman theory, monster theory and critical posthumanism (Braidotti, Haraway, Lykke, McCormack, Shildrick) alongside queer theory, transgender theory, feminism and postcolonial theory.