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Cyborgs as Discourse: the Intersection of Feminism, Postmodernismand Science Fiction in the 1980s
 Nicholas Hirschfacsimilesmiles@gmail.comDecember 15
th
, 20091
 
Cyborgs as Discourse: The Intersection of Feminism, Postmodernismand Science Fiction in the 1980sHarrison Ford leans menacingly over a beautiful woman. Her back is to the wall,her hair loose and wild. She is visibly shaken, perhaps scared. Ford’s expression isambiguous, somewhere between attraction and rage. “Say, ‘kiss me’,” he tells her. Shetells him she can’t rely on her memories, and he demands again that she tell him to kissher. Still hesitant, she nods; tears stand out in her eyes. He makes her tell him she wantshim twice more before kissing her. In this moment, it is unclear whether he actuallywould have respected her wishes if she refused him, or if her reason for saying yes washis intimidating behavior. Their relationship is complex and indecipherable, an aptreflection of gender politics in the real world. Ford's “romantic” advances aredisturbingly reminiscent of sexual assault. Further complicating the issue is the fact thatRachel, his love interest, is a
replicant 
, a manufactured organism with memories whichshe has only recently discovered are not real.
1
Rachel's tragedy is in the question of her agency, first as a programmed being, then as a woman; in either case, her consent is presented as incidental to his interests.This love scene from the 1982 blockbuster film
 Blade Runner 
raises a number of questions about gender and agency. Would Decker (Ford's character) have stopped, if Rachel said no? As a replicant, a programmed being, would she have been capable of saying no? If Decker didn't stop, would he be disregarding a woman's right to control her own body, or simply ignoring a programmed response, or both? If Rachel was never a
1 Ridley Scott, et al,
 Blade Runner 
(Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 1982 (2007)).
2
 
human being in the first place, would it be possible for her to give meaningful consent inthe first place? More to the point, as a created being, does the combination of Rachel'sgender and her status as a sexualized object reflect a broader conflation of thesecharacteristics? In this film, which describes male cyborgs as worker drones, and femalesas “your basic pleasure model”, gender is literally a construct.
 Blade Runner 
thus usesgendered cyborgs to explore complex postmodern questions about gender dynamics,identity construction, and the relationship between technology and consciousness.This is the focus of cyborg feminism: how does the cyborg, as an imaginativeconstruction, help us to analyze the role and nature of identity from a postmodern,feminist perspective? The period in which this film was released was one of intense philosophical, political and technological upheaval, illustrated by the rise of  postmodernism, changes in feminist discourse, and the development of a growing body of cyborg iconography. I will argue that, from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s, feminism, postmodernism and the conception of the cyborg became inextricably entwined. Thisvital cross-section is illustrated in the work of Donna Haraway and Anne Balsamo, twofeminist theorists of that decade who helped to create the framework for “cyborgfeminism”, a unique style of feminist social and literary criticism which has becomeincreasingly popular in the last decade.What follows will be a historical analysis of the context in which cyborgs enteredfeminist discourse by way of postmodernism and a splintering feminist identity. I will begin with an overview of what the term
cyborg 
means, its changing relationship withinscience fiction and with feminist critique. Second, I will briefly examine thedevelopment of postmodern philosophy in the work of three important writers,3
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