Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought

PART II

PART II Technologies and Gender in Science Fiction Film If, as . . . feminist critics of science have argued, there is a relation among the desire for mastery, an objectivist account of science, and the imperialist project of subduing nature, then the posthuman offers resources for the construction of another kind of account. In this account, emergence replaces teleology; reflexive epistemology replaces objectivism; distributed cognition replaces autonomous will; embodiment replaces a body seen as a support system for the mind; and a dynamic partnership between humans and intelligent machines replaces the liberal humanist subject’s manifest destiny to dominate and control nature. Of course, this is not necessarily what the posthuman will mean—only what it can mean if certain strands among its complex seriations are highlighted and combined to create a vision of the human that uses the posthuman as leverage to avoid reinscribing, and thus repeating, some of the mistakes of the past. —N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman The alien (re)constructions we encounter in some feminist science fiction literature challenge conventional notions of female bodies as ‘‘different .’’ While, historically, scientific discourse and popular belief have relied on biology to construct and create sexual difference,1 in science fiction narratives technologies are central to this process of ‘‘othering’’ women’s bodies. As Linda Janes puts it in The Gendered Cyborg, ‘‘In the case of the alien and android creatures that represent a defining trope of the science fiction genre it is, of course, actually technology, rather than biology, that reproduces gender and thereby challenges conceptions of what it is to be human, gendered, a stable subject’’ (93). When it comes to science fiction 104 TECHNOLOGIES AND GENDER film, this aspect is further complicated by the technologies of the medium itself. While science fiction writers conceptualize technology and its impact on the human, science fiction films’ representations of technology are themselves applications of technology: ‘‘In film this technological construction occurs at the level of both the material production of film itself and within the narrative’’ (Janes 93). Science Fiction Film and Identifications Science fiction film adds another aspect to the consideration of technology ’s relationship to the human: as a technological project in itself, the science fiction film’s relationship to technology is different from that of the written science fiction text. In addition, mainstream science fiction films shape cultural meanings through their systems of representation to a much broader extent than does science fiction literature, which is consumed by a more selective audience than that of the mainstream Hollywood science fiction film. The following analyses of Alien Resurrection and The Matrix look at mainstream representations of technology and difference in which film’s nature as a medium of spectacle is relevant, and they examine elements of a posthuman cyborg feminist subjectivity within these representations. In The Aesthetics of Ambivalence: Rethinking Science Fiction Film in the Age of Electronic (Re)Production, Brooks Landon reexamines the relationship of science fiction literature and film and argues that different science fiction texts demand different critical discourses. Landon suggests that science fiction film ‘‘has its roots in spectacle rather than in narrative’’ (xiv) and thus moves the visual and acoustic sensation produced by special effects into the center of the text, dominating the narrative aspect. Or, as Annette Kuhn puts it in Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema, ‘‘the technology of cinematic illusion displays the state of the art of its own art in science fiction films’’ (7). In Part II of Alien Constructions, I examine the genre’s obsession with not only the implications of science but also representations of technology. These representations play themselves out most dramatically in science fiction film, where visual and acoustic special effects place the narrative content within a sensual experience: technology becomes the medium (special effects spectacle) as well as the narrative drive (science fiction). The spectacle, as much as the narrative content, is the source of pleasure in the consumption of science fiction films. I explore representations of TECHNOLOGIES AND GENDER 105 the interface of technology and the human in science fiction film and their implications for women’s agency. These elements are discussed within the context of theories of cyborg feminism and cyberfeminism, where the feminist cyborg embodies the notion of an at times subversive, yet always problematic, identity within the exploitative conditions of global technoscience. While feminist science fiction literature creatively deconstructs the white male subject position, the...