Reading Cyborgs Writing Feminism

Balsamo, Anne. "Reading Cyborgs Writing Feminism." Anthologized in Jenny Wolmark, ed. Cybersexualities: A Reader on Feminist Theory, Cyborgs and Cyberspace. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1999. Reviewed Veronica Hollinger, "Doing It for Ourselves: Two Feminist Cyber-Readers, our source here, q.v.[1]

Identified by Hollinger as "an evaluation of the cyborg figure as it appears in a range of popular-culture materials. Balsamo usefully identifies the imaginative investments that have resulted in the hardbodied cyborgs of films such as The Terminator (1984) and Robocop (1987)." Hollinger notes Balsamo's argument for "the radical potential of the female cyborg figure," where "'Female cyborgs'" can "'embody cultural contradictions which strain the technological imagination. [... — our ellipsis, RDE]' ([Balsamo] 149). While demonstrating some of the limitations of [Donna] Haraway’s optimistic rendering of the cyborg as exemplary figure of resistant feminist politics, Balsamo nevertheless defends the undeniable potential for feminism of a technofigure that can challenge the 'fundamental terms and binarisms' ([Balsamo] 155) that continue to shore up oppressive systems of power and knowledge" (Hollinger p. 429).

RDE, completing, 23June19