The cyborg has been a powerful image in science fiction in the 20th century. As a cultural response to our increasingly intimate relationship with technology, it reveals a tug-of-war between dread and desire. Patriarchy uses biological determinism to assert that men’s identities arise from their brains, embodying reason, order, and culture; women’s identities arise from their reproductive organs, aligning them with emotion and the influences of nature. Donna Haraway suggests that the metaphor of the cyborg can be a progressive figure because of its ability to explode gender binaries and redefine technology according to feminist values. However, an examination of many cyborgs in popular culture tells a different story. Embodying contradiction, they expose patriarchy’s confusion with technology’s status: is it man’s ally, retaining the traditionally male attributes of strength and logic? Or a wily enemy, taking on the so-called “feminine” attributes of covert danger and volatility?
Building upon Haraway’s theory of gender and the cyborg, and Anson Rabinbach’s theory the human body as a motor, this paper will analyze Jessica in Frank Herbert’s Dune as a metaphorically cyborgian figure. Unlike many other women in science fiction, Jessica is a highly intelligent and independent woman, whose strong character as both mother and warrior drive the plot. Despite these admirable qualities, however, she fails to represent Haraway’s liberating feminist figure, instead falling prey to traditionally patriarchal notions. Although Herbert characterizes her as having the “masculine” qualities of strength, reason, and a robotic ability to suppress emotion, these attributes play party to the values of patriarchy. This paper will argue that Jessica represents the fetishized female cyborg, representing both threatening sexuality and idealized domesticity: ultimately her actions are motivated by her biological status as a mother, and her society is complicit in limiting her role to that of a “broodmare.”
About the presenterCarrie Lynn Evans
Carrie Lynn Evans a PhD student in English Literature at Université Laval in Québec. Her master’s thesis focused on gender, technology, and cyborg theory in Frank Herbert’s Dune. In her dissertation she is comparing Homer’s Odyssey and early cartography to attitudes toward space exploration in contemporary culture and science fiction works, including Afrofuturism. In addition to sci-fi, research interests include technology and culture, horror, and postmodern theory.