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From Cyborg to Other: Reframing Identities Within the Dystopian World in Marge Piercy's He, She and It

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From Cyborg to Other: Reframing Identities Within the Dystopian World in Marge Piercy's He, She and It International Journal of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Vol. 11 No. 3, (2020), pp. 3104-3112 From Cyborg to Other: Reframing Identities within the dystopian world in Marge Piercy’s He, She and It 1.Dr. Syrrina Ahsan Ali Haque Assistant Professor, Department of English, The University of Lahore, Pakistan. Email: [email protected] 2.Asia Saeed Lecturer, Department of English, University of Sahiwal [email protected] (Corresponding author) 3. Naghmana Siddique. Assistant Professor of English, Govt. Postgraduate College for Women. Sahiwal. Email: [email protected] 4.Hina Iqbal PhD Scholar at English Department, The University of Lahore, Pakistan. Email: [email protected] Abstract This research strives to investigate the ambivalent status of Cyborg and reframing identities within the dystopian world portrayed by Marge Piercy in her novel “He, She and It”. A cyborg is the combination of an organism and a machine. The main objective of this study is to analyze the impact of science and technology on the twenty-first century. Donna Haraway’s framework discussed in Cyborg Manifesto is employed in this research. In her essay, Haraway tries to comprehend the existence of cyborgs within a biased society. The feminist concept of “Otherness” and the “dystopian world” in the perspective of the cyborgs has not been much discussed in the previous research. This research will provide new dimensions for future researchers to critically analyze cyber literature. Keywords: Cyborg, Dystopian World, Identity, Otherness Introduction Cyborg is a short form of two words i.e. “Cybernetic’ and ‘Organism”. Nathan Kline and Clynes in 1960 used this word in their research paper (Gidding1). They presented this paper in a symposium (Law and Moser 3202). Cyborg is the combination of both human beings and machines with such skills and abilities which are not possibly available in human beings alone. Cyborg can be characterized as the hybrid mixture of Science fact and fiction. These creatures are proliferated to know about the possible skills of human and nonhuman hybrids. The era of the 1950s and 1960s was the period of modern films and fiction in which the producers tried to present either a utopian or dystopian world in their movies (Law and Moser 3203). They highlighted the impact of science and technology by presenting the multinational capitalism, nuclear energy, and menacing space exploration in the modern world. This imaginary picture of the invasion of machinelike aliens and others was too threatening. But in the postmodern era, the concept of otherness is reduced in the fiction, and cyborgs and aliens are presented as friends than aggressive trespassers (Law and Moser 3203). But still, the status of cyborgs remains ambiguous in the twenty-first century. Cyborgs have distorted the distinctive line between fact and fiction, real and virtual, body and brain, and humans and machines. Cyborgs’ actual identities are ambivalent. Concept of identities is also very 3104 ISSN: 2005-4289 IJDRBC Copyright ⓒ2020 SERSC International Journal of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Vol. 11 No. 3, (2020), pp. 3104-3112 important in superhero comics (Ruge 4). Mostly authors not only misrepresented or underrepresented the female characters but cyborgs also. This misrepresentation, the patriarchal and stereotypical image of females and cyborgs resulted in the multiple identities of both. The metaphors of cyborg and cyberspace are used to indicate the cultural, temporal, spatial shifts and displacement of postmodernism (Wolmark8). Wolmark argues that “They allow us to explore the new critical contours of postmodernity, in which alternative constructions of difference and identity become possible” (Wolmark9). The main aim of this research paper is to highlight the impact of development in technology on the 21st c by discussing the dystopian world presented in Marge Piercy's “He, She and It” (1991). This is the continuation of Piercy’s another novel “Woman on the Edge of Time” (Neverow16). Both of her novels are considered as “Optimistic Tragedies” (Khouri58).The female character in the novel is an ordinary woman who learned to fight against oppression (Neverow16). Another important character in the novel is a masculine cyborg “Yod”. Avram created Yod as a dangerous weapon but due to the interaction with a female character Shira, Yod transforms his masculine killing identity into the soft perfect lover (Smith265). The objective of this research is to analyze that how cyborgs are reframing their identities in the novel “He, She, and It” (1991). Male writers and female writers have differently portrayed the cyborgs in their science fiction writings. Males’ writings presented cyborgs to add up the values that constitute the stereotypical gender roles in the western society while female writers used cyborgs to question the gender identity (Smith 1). Donna Haraway’s presented her cyborg theory in her essay “A Cyborg Manifesto, Science, Technology and Socialist –Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” (1985) is employed in the research. Concept of Otherness and identity has been much discussed from the feminist perspective but not much research has been done from the perspective of the Cyborg. Therefore this research will open new dimensions to explore the representation of cyborgs in science fiction novels. Cyborgs’ identities are questionable and dynamic also. They are no more considered as ‘other’ in science fiction. Their importance and roles are becoming vital not only in fiction but also in real world. Cyborg can be considered as more open and honest figure due to its fantasy, simulation and artificiality (Ihde 83). Literature Review In the cybernetics a scientific discourse is used that connects machines with the human beings (Hayles84). This research tries to highlight the ambivalent status of cyborgs and analyzes the concept of ‘otherness’ in the perspective of male and female cyborgs and their struggle to reframe their identities in “He, She and It “by Marge Piercy. Some French and Russian writers also contributed in cybernetics such as Renard’s “The Altered Man” (1921) and Alexander Beliayev’s “Invisible Light” (1938). Some writers discussed artificially adapted men in science fiction such as John J. Pierce in his book “Foundation of Science Fiction” in 1987. In American Science fiction this trend of the human-machine constructed body was started after World War II. Some writers such as Nobert Wiener and David Serlin tried to give scientific reasoning for the creation of Cyborgs. They explained the phenomenon of increased human-machine capabilities. According to their findings of the research, human-machines have enhanced capabilities (Lestienne 2020). Nobert Wiener was a mathematician. “A Life in Cybernetics” (2018) is the combination of his two earlier books “Ex-Prodigy” and “I Am a Mathematician” published in 1953 and 1956 respectively. He was considered an expert on human-machine interaction. He calculated the time of response between a human 3105 ISSN: 2005-4289 IJDRBC Copyright ⓒ2020 SERSC International Journal of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Vol. 11 No. 3, (2020), pp. 3104-3112 and a machine. He produced military hardware such as guided missiles (Hayles 86). At first, human- machine was used in cybernetics to enhance the wartime modern prosthetics. In “The Other Arms Race” (2004), Serlin tried to present a positive human-machine relation. This positive image of rehabilitated bodies was an attempt to make such amputee’s bodies a human and gendered norm of western culture (Serlin 52). This human-machine friendly figure opened a new horizon in cyborg literature and these rehabilitated bodies are only represented as men who are doing their best to save humanity (Smith 9). Some writers also presented the gender biases in their work and presented cyborg’s subjective experience (Allman 2020). Some writers presented human beings especially males as dominant figures in their stories. In comparison to male writers, female authors are marginalized in writing of cyberpunks (Smith 32). The science fiction of the 1940s and 1950s was not only admired the reproductive power of women but also feared it. The authors portrayed the female alien as enlarged ugly beings. Female aliens were only presented as biological females while male protagonists as masculine superior beings. That protagonist was presented as superior to feminine ‘other’, inferior, weak, and incapable being. So, there was also stereotypical patriarchal supremacy over female alien (Robert 44). Many novelists such as C. L. Moore, Henery Kuttner, Bernard Wolfe, Poul Anderson and Robert Heinlein wrote stories about cyborgs’ identity and subjectivity during the 1940s to 1960s. “No Woman Born” (1944), “Camouflage” (1945), “Limbo” (1952), “Call me Joe” (1957), and “Starship Troopers” (1959) are some examples of such novels. In Moore’s short story a female cyborg protagonist named Deidre was presented who was disfigured due to fire. Through the character of Deidre Moore tried to represent the limitations which are imposed by a human male upon a female cyborg, due to her ‘Other’ identity. Her human-machine identity challenges the male identity because she was no longer a human. Some writers highlighted the cyborgs’ ambivalent identity during the 1960s to 1990s through their writings such as Anne McCaffery’s “The Ship Who Sang” (1969), Damon Knight’s “Masks” (1970). A cyborg can also be identified as ‘alien’ or ‘other’ as a woman, a marginal figure in society such
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