Cyberfeminism, the body and the virtual: Towards an intercultural perspective.

摘要

Since Donna Haraway published “The Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” in 1992, it has inspired and spawned the birth of a new kind of feminism commonly known as cyberfeminism. While postfeminisms as a whole has not really been concerned with the relationship between woman and technology, cyberfeminism is much interested in exploring the role of woman in the technological age and the fundamental relationship of women and technology as a privileged site of (inter)cultural criticism.; This dissertation proposes to discuss the issue of cyberfeminism not only from the perspective of feminisms, but also from the point of view of posthuman theory in the light of N. Katherine Hayles's book How We Became Posthuman, as well as other theories put forth by robotic experts, such as Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec. On the other hand, drawing upon the notions of the virtual, Body Without Organs, deterritorialization, difference, rhizomes, becoming, molar and molecular, geology, metallurgy, nomadology and machinic assemblage from Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy, this dissertation will explore intricate entanglements among women, technology and the virtual, particularly focusing on the concept of body and the relationship of the maternal body and the reproduction technologies.; This dissertation argues for the inevitable co-evolution or symbiosis of human and machine; and my arguments will proceed from the discussion of cybernetics theory, Deleuze and Guattari's notion of machinic assemblage, then move on to the discussion of the relationship of machine and organism, and nonorganic organisms. While the discussion emphasizes mainly on the symbiosis of human and machine such as, say, artificial intelligence, virtual environment and robotics, the relation between cyberfeminism and this symbiosis will also be brought into focus.; The aim of this dissertation is to set up an example towards the construction of a new interdisciplinary praxis called intercultural studies. Therefore, the thrust of this dissertation lies with the discussion of Chinese notion of technicity in its oldest form. My discussion mainly falls on the characters of tao, ji, qi, wu and qi as used in ancient Chinese texts such as Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi, Huianan Zi , The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine and The Chinese Medica Materia. Also, this dissertation purports to show that although the ancient Chinese philosophy is very different from the Western tradition in the issue of technicity and the relationship of human and organism, the former is able to contribute to the study of cyberfeminism, posthuman theory and the study of technoscience culture as a whole in the third millennium. In addition to ancient Chinese texts, I also bring in a study of the Female Writing in Hunan and the Female Kingdom in Yunnan as examples of becoming-minoritarian and anti-oedipal society.; As a Chinese woman, I believe that the study of technoscience culture and cyberfeminism in the Hong Kong context will have some contribution to the field only if it is strategically “situtated” and to become truly “intercultural”.