Critical Annotated Webliography by Vivian

Introduction
This essay aims to define cyborg and attempts to analyze the difference between human and cyborg with examples. The second part will focus on proving that cyborg is a transgressive figure.

The definition of cyborg
According to Donna Haraway’s most famous essay, "The Cyborg Manifesto," first published in 1985, she claimed that cyborg is "a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, and a world-changing fiction". It means that cyborg is a term used to designate a creature which is a mixture of organic and electromechanical devices.She also explained that we are all cyborg. It is because human are rely on technology very much nowadays, and we are not easy to separate with technology anymore. Try to imagine, what the world would become if we stop using any technology?

The Collapse of oppressive binaries
Krista Scott claimed that“Since the cyborg does not exist as nature or culture, but is rather a hybrid of both and more.” The first boundary breakdown is between natural and society, it is because there are many and many ‘natural’ sceneries which were artificial, some examples from Krista Scott’s article; “Japan’s ski slopes built with artificial snow, beaches washed with artificial waves, golf driving ranges where the players are stacked one above the other up to the sky.”
Apart from natural and society, man and machine are not easily separated. Machine advanced our quality of life a lot, people wearing glasses or contact lens and coupling with machines for medical purposes, such as artificial limbs and joints, hearing aids, implanted corneal lenses, and artificial skin have been described as cyborg. It is because the mixture of human and machine.

Cyborg women
Many of media texts also construct cyborg bodies as female.Cyborg woman is abject in that she transgresses the boundaries between human and machine, self and other, as well as the artificial and the real. Gender role are socially constructed, we are told to be boy or girl rather inborn. Women are not nature but constructed like cyborg.
The article used blade runner as an example, Female cyborgs are endowed with hyperfeminine, sexualized traits. Gibson's Molly is given long, razor-sharp fingernails. Major Kusanagi and the Knight Sabers have large, feminine breasts that are often the focus of the camera's gaze. Zhora from Blade runner is an exotic dancer, supposedly taking "pleasure from the snake that once corrupted man." Besides, I picked the movie, the stepford wives which was directed by Frank Oz, to illustrate that male is the dominant role in society. The story is about Joanna Eberhart (Nicole Kidman) and her husband moved from Manhattan to Stepford. Joanna discovered that all beautiful housewives are not robots, but cyborgs. They are created by their husbands who want an elegant and talented wife. It shows that women are portrayed in a passive and powerless position that is under men’s control. Both Blade runner and The Stepford wives illustrated that texts also objectify female bodies and treat them as sexual objects.

Man or machine
Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University says one day robots could fool us into believing they are human.I totally agree with him as technology developed very fast, machines are becoming more human and Japanese have already developed a human-like robot, a "female" android named Repliee Q1Expo. When I first saw this news, I was totally surprising. By looking and talking to her, you may not easily realize that she is a robot or we can say she is a cyborg, because she physically looks like human being but made by machinery. Not only does she looks like human, but also move, act and even breathe like human. More importantly, we have found that people forget she is an android while interacting with her. Beside machines look like human, people intergrate machine parts into body or too rely on technology are also defined as half human half machine. According to Haraway, one difference between machines and man is that machines could not achieve man's dream.

We are cyborg
Haraway say she is a cyborg, actually she does not mean she has got machine inside her body. Cyborg not only claim those physically combined with organism and machine, but also refer to those who rely on science and new-technology so much. “the realities of modern life happen to include a relationship between people and technology so intimate that it's no longer possible to tell where we end and machines begin. In fact, she's not the only cyborg in Healdsburg. There are 9,978 of them.”

A postmodern look at Blade runner
Haraway describes cyborg is half machine and half human. Blade runner written by Ridley Scott is a movie based in the future that challenge identity, humanity, cyborg myth and gender construction. A central theme in the movie Blade runner is that of blurring the boundary between human and machine. The characters are mainly replicants (cyborg) which are created by humans. Replicants have programmed different skills, physical abilities, implant false memories and emotional responses so that they look like humans. They supposed to be no feeling, no pain and no real emotion.
In the movie, the cyborgs are ambivalence in terms of their representations, especially Roy Batty and Rachael. For example, at Deckard’s apartment, he tells Rachael the truth that she is a replicant, those family pictures and memories are fake. Rachael starts tearing, she as a cyborg supposed do not have emotion and feeling. Even replicants are more likely to be humans and even have real emotions, while the real humans appear cold-blooded. The definition of human and cyborg become blurring. What differentiates human from nonhuman?

Conclusion
To conclude, where do we draw the line between human and machine, masculine and feminine, life and non-life? The boundaries are blurring, not just in fiction but in our late twentieth century reality. Cyborg is going beyond the line between human and machine. It becomes difficult to distinguish human or not, not to mention gender. As Haraway said that we are all cyborg, there is no doubt that people living in developed countries in the late 20th century are already hybrid human-machine.





Reference
David, W. news.bbc.co.uk. Japanese develop 'female' android, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4714135.stm
Donna ,H. standford.edu, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181, 2nd March,2009, http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html
Gauntgirl, horrordiva.com, A postmodern look at “blade runner”, 2nd March,2009 , http://www.horrordiva.com/new/essays/bladerunner.php

Hari, K. wired.com, you are cyborg, 3rd March,2009 ,
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffharaway_pr.html
Michael, K. cyberartsweb.org, Man or Machine, 1st March,2009, http://www.cyberartsweb.org/cpace/cyborg/kim/4.html
Patrick, N. cyberartsweb.org, More Woman than Woman, 2nd March,2009, http://www.cyberartsweb.org/cpace/cyborg/nagle/7.html
Krista, S. stumptouos.com, The Cyborg, the Scientist, the Feminist and Her Critic, 2nd March,2009, http://www.stumptuous.com/cyborg.html
Wikipedia, The Stepford Wives (2004 film), 3rd March,2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stepford_Wives_(2004_film)