Description
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.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid in Science Fiction
Chapter 1: Woman or Womankind? Signatures, Suspension and Bare Life in Feminism and Science Fiction
Chapter 2: Removing/Reprogramming the Masculine – The Homo Sacer in the Feminist Dis/Utopia
Chapter 3: "You can alter our physiology, but you cannot change our nature": The Girl in the Machine
Chapter 4: Female Machines and Female Flesh – Women and/as Automata
Chapter 5: "Formally a correct response. But simulated" – Scoring Women on the Voight-Kampff Scale
Chapter 6: Profane Simulations – Home and Ruin in the Fallout Games
Chapter 7: Becoming and Avatar – Playing as Cyborgs Among Gynoids in the Deus Ex Games
Conclusion: Virtual Wives and Autonomous Selves – Towards a Politics of Becoming-Gynoid
