SF-TH Inc Refiguring the Radical Cyborg in Mamoru Oshii's "Ghost in the Shell" Author(s): Carl Silvio Reviewed work(s): Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Mar., 1999), pp. 54-72 Published by: SF-TH Inc Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4240752 . Accessed: 19/08/2012 22:25 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. SF-TH Inc is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Science Fiction Studies. http://www.jstor.org 54 SCIENCEFICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 26 (1999) OTHERARTICLES Carl Silvio Refiguringthe Radical Cyborgin MamoruOshii's Ghostin the Shell In 1985, Donna Harawayfirst published"A CyborgManifesto: Science, Technology,and Socialist-Feminism in the LateTwentieth Century," an "iro- nic politicalmyth" which theorized the liberatory potential inherent in women's interactionswith informationtechnology. While well awareof the role such technologyplays in the maintenanceof socialcontrol and patriarchy, Haraway refuses its demonization,opting insteadto hold two contradictoryattitudes concerningcyborgs in tensionthroughout her essay. Thoughthe cyborg, "a hybridof machineand organism" (149), may representthe finalimposition of informationtechnology as a meansof socialcontrol, it may also be potentially recodedand appropriated by feminismas a meansof dismantlingthe binarisms andcategorical ways of thinkingthat have characterized the history of Western culture.The cyborg, in otherwords, serves as a representationalfigure that embodiesthe capacityof informationtechnologies to erasegender and racial boundariesand the structuresof oppressionwhich have historically accompa- niedthem. Simultaneously, it alsoparadigmatically stands for whatMary Ann Doane refers to as the "individuousnetwork of invisible power relationships made possible through high technology" (211). As Doane observes, despite Haraway's attempt to hold these two perspectives in tension, "the radical cyborg ultimately seems to win out" (211). Haraway, by this account, finally seems to endorse the cyborg as an imaginary figurationof a posthuman,post- gendered subject who has slipped the bonds of dominantculture. In the thirteenyears since Haraway'sarticle first appeared,this fantasy seemsto haveacquired a greatdeal of currencyin the popularmedia as well. A recentMCI commercial which proclaims the internetas a "utopian"space devoidof race, gender,age, or infirmity,attests to the growingpopularity of this idea, the increasingbelief thatinformation technology and "cyberspace" are bringingus ever closerto a worldfree of social inequity.Usually lost in such corporateendorsements of cyberspace,however, is the other half of Haraway'sargument, the sensethat the cyborg equally figures the potential for increasedsocial dominationinherent in suchnew technology.Consequently, not all culturalanalysts share in this burgeoningenthusiasm for the new frontier.Anne Balsamo, for instance,argues that, while cyberspaceand other instancesof cyborgculture seem "torepresent a territoryfree from the burdens of history,it will, in effect, serve as anothersite for the technologicaland no less conventionalinscription of the gendered,race-marked body" (131). By her REFIGURINGTHE RADICAL CYBORG 55 account,despite the fact thatthese technologicaladvancements hold out the promiseof new identities,they have thus far actually delivered what she terms "therearticulation of old identitiesto new technologies"(131). In lightof this, Balsamoconceives her role as a feministto lie in unravelingthis processof rearticulationby connecting"seemingly isolated moments of discourseinto a narrativethat helps us makesense of [cultural]transformations as they emerge" (161). I am particularlyinterested in Balsamo'ssuggestion that the popular discoursesurrounding cyborg culture promises something other than what it provides. It is not, in other words, simply that the increasinglycomplex interfacesbetween human and machine work to reify traditionaldichotomies of gender, but that their variousarticulations within our social imaginary presentthem as exactlythe opposite.There is thus whatmight be calledan elementof seductionat work, wherebyinformation technology often presents itselfto us as potentiallyliberating when in factour actualinteractions with it oftenreinforce conventional social structuresof domination. Pop-culturalrepresentations of the cyborgparticipate in this seductionby servingas partof whatGabriele Schwab terms "the fantasmatic aspects of the technologicalimagination"-that is, the ways in which such representations "becomea fieldof cathexis,an imaginaryscreen onto which psychic energies from the most archaicto the most up-to-datemay be projected"(68). The figureof the cyborgthus represents an imaginaryprojection into the realmof popularfiction, a trope investedwith culturalanxieties and beliefs about contemporarytechnology. But such fictions,of course,function in societyas morethan the representationof culturalattitudes; they also perform ideological operationsby shapingand reinforcing current belief systemsas well. Fictional representationsof the cyborgtherefore provide ideal sites for the examination of how the interfacewith technologycan be presentedto us as liberating,as what Althusserwould call "an imaginaryrepresentation of the relationof individualsto theirreal conditionsof existence"(123), while simultaneously naturalizingand buttressingexisting social relations.It should be noted, however,that this process of naturalizationmay not work in the automaticway that Althusser'smodel has often been criticizedfor suggesting.Following RaymondWilliams, I wish to view the fictionalrepresentation of the cyborg as an ideologicalsite thatworks "toward the settingof limitsand the exertion of pressureand away from a predicted,prefigured and controlledcontent" (380). It is not, however,always the case thatthe imageof the cyborgappeals to a hopefor socialjustice while our actualmaterial interactions with technology, our "real conditionsof existence,"further entangle us withinnetworks of domination.Oftentimes, this dramais playedout entirelywithin the realmof the socialimaginary itself. In thesecases, the radicalcyborg is bothvalidated andmade to serve the interestsof the dominantwithin a singlefictional text. Suchtexts present and seem to endorsethe radicalcyborg, an imageresonant with liberatorypossibilities which solicits a belief in technology'scapacity to providesocial justice, while simultaneously using this image to supportexisting 56 SCIENCEFICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 26 (1999) structuresof culturalhegemony. The radical cyborg thus imaginarilygratifies various liberatoryfantasies which have, in a sense, already been coded in the terms of the dominant because they have been naturalizedwithin the social imaginary itself. I contendthat MamoruOshii's animatedcyberpunk film Ghost in the Shell works in just such a way. In what follows, I will examine how this film, a fascinating example of Japanese animation (or anime), participates in the seductive appeal of the radical cyborg. I will argue that it functions as an inverse of Jean-LouisComolli's "fifth type" of ideological film, a film which "seem[s] at first sight to belong firmly within the [dominant]ideology and to be completely under its sway, but which turn[s] out to be so only in an ambiguousmanner" (Comolli 27). For Comolli, such films "throwup obstacles in the way of ideology, causing it to swerve and get off course" (27). Ghost in the Shell, by contrast, appears at first sight to subvert radically the power dynamics inherent in dominant structures of gender and sexual difference, while covertly reinscribing them. It could be argued that cyberpunk lends itself perfectly to just such an ideological process. Several critics have accused its literary manifestationsof failing adequatelyto representfeminist issues and concernsdespite the fact that its depictionsof the interactionbetween humans and technology seem to offer just such a promise. KarenCadora claims that "Cyberpunk'sdeconstruction of the humanbody first appearedto signal a revolution in political art. However, closer examinationsof the movementhave revealedthat its politics are anything but revolutionary"(357). For Cadora, cyberpunkis "very much a boy's club" (357), its writers guilty of providing few female protagonists and reiterating feminine stereotypes (357-358). She thus calls for a "feminist cyberpunk," a development which "envisions something that feminist theory badly needs: fragmentedsubjects who can, despite their multiplepositionings, negotiate and succeed in a high-tech world" (357). At first glance, Ghost in the Shell appears to offer somethingakin to this model by providingus with a fragmentedfemale subject who seems to correspond to what Cadora envisions. In spite of this, however, I believe that the film re-enacts the same failure that Cadora locates in earlier cyberpunk texts-that is, the failure to deliver on its revolutionary promise. The film, in other words, gives an outlet and a voice to the liberatory potential of the cyborg, to Haraway's "ironic political myth faithful to feminism"(149),