Woohoo for Fiction!

 “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.” (2190)

If we take out the first part of that definition, “a hybrid of machine and organism”, we are left with the latter stating that a cyborg is a hybrid of social reality and fiction; Or, in other words, fantasy. Humans are always wondering what comes after our lives are over, after death. But, what about the select few people within society who believe in something else; something not entirely human, but not entirely farfetched either. As you probably figured from my picture, I’m referring to wizards and witches. Witches and wizards are human, but not only so. They are a combination of humanity and fantasy. Donna Haraway states that cyborgs are creatures of social reality (humans) and fiction (fantasy).

            “By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized as fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality”. (2191) 

Vampires: A race of creatures that are neither dead nor undead. They are humans, physically dead to the world for their hearts do not beat, allowing the blood to pump within their body giving them the sustenance they need. Therefore, they feast on the blood of those who are “alive”, who’s hearts beat and circulate their blood and plasma, keeping them warm and awake to the world.

            I’m taking the completely fictional side with this theory because I think it’s pretty cool and interesting. No one knows what happens after death, and not everyone believes in a life after death surrounded by pearly gates and clouds. But what is there to stop us from believing in these fictional creatures? Do they not fulfill, in part, the very definitions of “cyborgs”? Are they not hybrids of imagination and material reality? Of social reality and fiction?

            Alright, so about this one: Iron Man. Again, completely fictional, yet he completely fulfills the entire definition of cyborg. He is human, with an electronic heart designed specifically to keep him alive and his heart beating. This being said, we can relate this to humanities continuing advancement with its dependence on technology; the next big breakthrough. Humans are so obsessed with getting the latest android phone, iPad, touch screen (insert object here). Tony Stark, a scientist and a genius, finds a way to create the next big thing in our world. Haraway’s definition fits like a perfect puzzle piece in our world’s struggle to connect ourselves with technology and how we are becoming the cyborgs.

            

Word Count: 443
Works Cited
Haraway, Donna. "A Manifesto for Cyborgs"  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. W.W. Norton & Company; Second Edition. New York, 2001. Pages 2190 - 2220. Print

Feminism Theory Group Presentation

            The Feminism Theory group presentation was primarily a group effort all around. All of us found things in the media: advertisements, YouTube videos, music videos, literature, pictures, etc. Kelly was the one who put the PowerPoint presentation together but, it was a team effort. My part was to send in any media, mostly music videos, which belonged to a certain time period and emphasized feminism. My part in the presentation was to go over and elaborate on Susan Bordo’s piece on femininity: “The Reproduction of Femininity”. After everyone emailed all their findings, we got together and decided to figure out who was going to present on what and how we were going to go about presenting the theory as a whole, to the class. My other contribution to the presentation was working with the black box and making sure the presentation ran smoothly and functionally. 

Feminism: Unleash Your Inner Male

What is feminism? Well, feminism is the belief that there should be an equality of power between men and women. Yet, the importance or inclusion of intersectionality between gender and race, class, or sexuality are often times disagreed upon. Now, with that being said, feminism has been deemed with the stereotypical crazy woman who yells and goes berserk when something that is slightly demeaning towards a woman, albeit funny: such as a woman cooking in the kitchen while the man sits and watches a football game with his buddies and some beer;  a “traditional” aspect of things. But, that’s not all that feminism is about. Susan Bordo, in her book Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body: Chapter 5 “The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity” states that “The body—what we eat, how we dress, the daily rituals through which we attend to  the body—is a medium of culture.” (2240) Feminism is far beyond just a woman yelling at a movie scene because the woman is portrayed as the submissive type with no will power.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, the media created an image of the “ideal woman”, which created a severe diversion in the image of women.  In order to subvert the desired burdening male view of women, Bordo claims three psychological disorders arose as a facility by which women could passively work through:

–        Hysteria: disables the body for both sex and work

–        Anorexia: drastic transformation of the body through hunger strike

–        Agoraphobia: refusal to leave the house to participate in a stereotypical female activity—shopping.

“Working within this framework, we see that whether we look at hysteria, agoraphobia, or anorexia, we find the body of the sufferer deeply inscribed with an ideological construction of femininity emblematic of the period in question. The construction, of course, is always homogenizing and normalizing, erasing racial, class, and other differences and insisting that all women aspire to a coercive, standardized ideal.” (2243)

Just look at the Olsen twins. 

In our society today, the media has dubbed this (look at the picture) the ideal of what women should look like. 

<<--This, is what society says is pretty. The Olsen twins are the best example for Anorexia and they live up to Bordo's claim about the body as a text, and how there has been a sever diversion in the image of women. 

Word Count: 394

Works Cited

Bordo, Susan. "The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity".  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. W.W. Norton & Company; Second Edition. New York, 2001. Pages 2240 -2254. Print