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i
“Emily Cox-Palmer-White’s original synthesis of ideas drawn from Giorgio

Agamben and Gilles Deleuze supplies a new way of thinking about the role of
women in feminist science fiction, cinema and video games. She provides a con-
vincing and thought-provoking contribution to feminist thought and popular
cultural studies.”
Paul March-Russell, University of Kent
ii
iii
The Biopolitics of Gender

in Science Fiction
Questioning essentialist forms of feminist discourse, this work develops an

innovative approach to gender and feminist theory by drawing together the
work of key feminist and gender theorists, such as Judith Butler and Donna
Haraway, and the biopolitical philosophy of Giorgio Agamben and Gilles
Deleuze. By analysing representations of the female cyborg figure, the gynoid,
in science fiction literature, television, film and video games, the work acknow-
ledges its normative and subversive properties while also calling for a new
feminist politics of selfhood and autonomy implied by the posthuman qualities
of the female machine.
Emily Cox-Palmer-White is a researcher specialising in gender theory, science

fiction and philosophy. Her research is concerned with developing new avenues
in feminist philosophy using the work of Giorgio Agamben and Gilles Deleuze.
Her work also explores the relationship between gender theory, posthumanism
and female robots in science fiction and real-world technology. For her paper
“Denuding the Gynoid: The Female Robot as Bare Life in Alex Garland’s Ex
Machina,” she was awarded the Peter Nicholls Essay Prize by the Science Fiction
Foundation and has also received the Support a New Scholar Award from the
Science Fiction Research Association. She recently contributed a chapter to the
collection Blade Runner 2049 and Philosophy published by Open Court.
iv
Routledge Studies in Speculative Fiction
Speculative Satire in Contemporary Literature and Film

Rant Against the Regime
Kirk Combe
The Biopolitics of Gender in Science Fiction

Feminism and Female Machines
Emily Cox-Palmer-White
Character and the Supernatural in Shakespeare and Achebe

Kenneth Usongo
For more information about this series, please visit:

www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Speculative-Fiction/book-series/RSSF
v
The Biopolitics of Gender

in Science Fiction
Feminism and Female Machines
Emily Cox-Palmer-White
vi
First published 2021

by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Taylor & Francis
The right of Emily Cox-Palmer-White to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cox-Palmer-White, Emily, author.
Title: The biopolitics of gender in science fiction: feminism and
female machines/Dr. Emily Cox-Palmer-White.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. |
Series: Routledge studies in speculative fiction |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2020037326 | ISBN 9780367416218 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780367691028 (paperback) | ISBN 9780367691011 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Science fiction–History and criticism. |
Women in literature. | Gender identity in literature. |
Biopolitics in literature. | Feminism and literature.
Classification: LCC PN3433.6.C69 2021 | DDC 809.3/8762–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037326
ISBN: 978-0-367-41621-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-69101-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Newgen Publishing UK
vi
Contents
List of figures viii

Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid

in Science Fiction 1
1 Woman or Womankind? Signatures, Suspension and

Bare Life in Feminism and Science Fiction 21
2 Removing/Reprogramming the Masculine – The Homo

Sacer in the Feminist Dis/Utopia 43
3 “You can alter our physiology, but you cannot change

our nature”: The Girl in the Machine 60
4 Female Machines and Female Flesh –Women and/as

Automata 79
5 “Formally a correct response. But simulated” –Scoring

Women on the Voight-Kampff Scale 90
6 Profane Simulations –Home and Ruin in the Fallout Games

102
7 Becoming and Avatar –Playing as Cyborgs among Gynoids

in the Deus Ex Games 118
Conclusion: Virtual Wives and Autonomous Selves –Towards

a Politics of Becoming-Gynoid 132
Bibliography 143
Index 150
vi
Figures
1.1 A visual representation of the signature 31

3.1 A visual representation of Deleuze and Guattari’s molar,
molecular and lines of flight 75
7.1 Anna Navarre and a Woman in Black, Deus Ex,
Ion Storm, 2000 126
xi
newgenprepdf
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to my PhD supervisor Professor William

Watkin who, together with Professor Sean Gaston, first introduced me during
my time at Brunel University to the work of Giorgio Agamben and Gilles
Deleuze. This was the spark that ignited a long-standing love of philosophy
and inspired me to begin my academic career. I cherish the memory of all those
lively lessons and philosophical debate: these seminar discussions culminated
in my decision to embark on a PhD My special thanks go out to William for
supporting me during my doctoral research project, which lead to the writing
of this book.
I would also like to thank Dr Karen Throsby who, through the Feminist
Studies Association UK mentoring scheme, has advised me with kindness and
understanding. My special thanks also go out to Lisa Downing, who served on
my viva panel and later became my friend, for her support and guidance.
Words simply cannot express how grateful I am to my wonderful husband
for supporting me tirelessly while I was writing this work, for making all the
tea and doing all the housework and for always fiercely believing in me. Thank
you for always working so hard to help me succeed.
My deepest and warmest thanks to my dear father, Richard Cox, for his
help and love and boundless understanding and kindness. You played a key
role in making this work possible by proofreading and letting me bounce ideas
off you, by helping me with word-processing and correcting my grammar!
Thank you for always being there for me in every way.
x
1
Introduction
Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid
in Science Fiction
Joanna Russ’s The Female Man contains one of the most nuanced and troub-
ling descriptions of the contradictory desires produced in women as a result of
patriarchal power and oppression. In the novel, Joanna is one of four women
drawn together across time and multiple dimensions, but who come from a
patriarchal world similar to our own. Joanna’s way of coping with her male-
dominated world is to think of herself as a man: “If we are all mankind, it
follows that I too am a man, and not at all a woman … I think I am a Man;
I think you had better call me a Man” (Russ 135–6). I believe this conceptual-
isation of herself as a “female man” represents, in part, a desire to not be treated
like a woman –this partly means to not be treated like an object unworthy of
respect but it also constitutes a wish to be acknowledged as something more
or perhaps other than one’s female gender. Yet, there is the sense that, in order
to not be understood as a woman, one must therefore be understood as the
binary opposite. Being respected, having one’s agency and authenticity as an
individual recognised, constitutes being understood culturally as a man.
Joanna’s desire in the novel to become a “female man” is a desire to divorce
herself from the female identity forced on women from birth –not necessarily
because all aspects of femininity are negative but because femininity and deg-
radation are so often and so deeply entwined that to reject one would seem to
free oneself from the other. Yet to reject femaleness can mean many things –for
some it can mean accessing a new level of authenticity. For others it can be a
symptom of internalised sexism: if one rejects femininity on the grounds that
femininity is not respected by a sexist society then one may be capitulating
to prejudice. Then again, the concept of the “female man” may also relate to
the desire to simply have one’s masculinity acknowledged in the same way
that society expects and accepts women’s femininity: a desire to be “seen” as
a “man” as much as one is seen as a woman. This might be characterised as a
non-binary experience, or perhaps simply a desire to not be pigeonholed –to
not be understood purely as one nebulous female figure emerging from the ill-
defined category of Woman.
I interpret Joanna’s desire to be treated “like a man” as a desire rooted in
the confusion inherent in gender itself. It is a symptom of the fact that gender
represents so many seemingly contradictory facets of culture, society, biology,
physicality, psychology and desire. Gender is at once a core part of one’s
2
2 Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid

identity, intensely personal to ourselves and yet also a politicosocial tool of
the state. Judith Butler described it as “a regulatory fiction” in Gender Trouble
(185) and then later redefined it as “a vacillating border,” one which “registers
ontologically in a way that is permanently difficult to determine. Sexual diffe-
rence is neither fully given nor fully constructed but partially both” (Undoing
Gender 186). This book is partly concerned with exploring the borders of
these facets: searching for where the constructed facet of gender ends and the
“given” begins.
Joanna’s desire to be seen “as a man” is ultimately a limited attempt to
approach what it might mean to be seen as a “person” beneath the gendered
behaviours ingrained within and reproduced by us in a manner that seems
largely out of our control. But what is this layer of authenticity that lurks
beneath gender performativity, the reality of our physical bodies and all their
myriad associations? Joanna Russ’s The Female Man both made me a feminist
and simultaneously made me aware of the troubling aspects of some perva-
sive forms of feminist philosophy. It took me long time to describe myself as
a feminist without discomfort or irony. And when I started teaching in higher
education, I encountered the same suspicion of feminism among my students,
many of whom seemed uncomfortable associating themselves with the term.
While many cited specific reasons for this, what always struck me was an
overwhelming sense of uncertainty –a sense of not knowing exactly what it
meant to be a feminist and an even more daunting suspicion that feminism was
not a word which the individual woman could truly take ownership of.
It is likely true that much of this stems from socialisation –women are
culturally programmed to be suspicious of female power and to internalise a
sexist suspicion of their own importance. However, I believe there is more to
the anxiety around the word feminism than can be accounted for by social-
isation. The tepid results of a recent YouGov poll, asking women whether
they identified as feminists (Sharff), reflects that many women still feel that
the “F” word might not really, fully describe the person who is trying to use
it. I believe this is because, while great strides by queer theorists and inter-
sectional feminist discourse have been made to move away from binary
conceptualisations of sex and gender, feminism as a whole has yet to divorce
itself from a dichotomous understanding of male and female, of self and other,
and of an ultimately essentialist understanding of womanhood: one which
often reinforces the very patriarchal ideals feminism problematises. As Lisa
Downing points out: “the phantasy of woman as innately caring, collective,
and compassionate … is the ghost that haunts feminism every bit as much as
it haunts patriarchy” (8).
This book is partly dedicated to problematising the binary within fem-
inism and gender theory of the individual versus the collective, or the specific
versus the general, and arguing how deeply necessary this is for the advance-
ment of feminist aims. I also believe this approach can allow feminists to find
more common ground, despite our sectarian tendencies. A more nuanced
understanding of gender as varied rather than universal would also allow us to
speak more honestly about the ideologies and doubts which fuel the prejudiced
3
Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid 3

gender critical position: allowing us to discuss openly what we mean by gender
and expose those who use specific notion of womanhood as a means of exclu-
sion. A desire to perpetuate the myth of a homogenous female collective has
repeatedly led to conflicts between feminists of different classes, races, bodies
and sexualities: it is divisive, limiting and utterly self-defeating. To be clear,
when I say “woman” I am referring to, as Sara Ahmed eloquently describes:
“all those who travel under the sign women.” As Ahmed goes on to argue, “no
one is born a woman; it is an assignment (not just a sign, but also a task or an
imperative…)” (Intro).
Gender appears to be equal parts authenticity and performance –it
forms part of an identity that can be real and meaningful to us and yet it
also represents an almost unbearable weight of expectation. As Judith Butler
argues: “the particular sociality that belongs to bodily life, to sexual life, and to
becoming gendered … establishes a field of ethical enmeshment with others …
As bodies, we are always for something more than, and other than, ourselves”
(Undoing Gender 25). To live as a woman is to take part in this difficult balan-
cing act between personal authenticity and social intrusion. We must acknow-
ledge what may, at first, seem a contradictory truth: that equality arises from
recognising and empowering individual difference as much as shared qualities
or shared inequalities. We need an understanding of woman that is recognised
for all its indistinctness and individuality, one which is not based on restrictive
recourses towards reproductive capacities, emotion, caregiving capacities, or
even biology and sex.
But how can we theorise, equally, both sameness and difference, individual
interests versus those of the collective, specific experience versus universal
equality? The contention of this book is that in order to begin to consider
both these aspects, we need an original framework for holding these unstable
and fluid binary oppositions in our minds simultaneously. This book brings
feminism, gender and queer theory together with the biopolitics of Giorgio
Agamben and Gilles Deleuze in order to form an innovative approach to gender
and feminist theory: by viewing the institution of gender as a biopolitical phe-
nomenon that is as ancient as biopower itself. Using Agamben’s theory of
indistinction, I analyse the categories of male and female, and/or masculine
and feminine, as concepts whose boundaries are blurred because both oppos-
itional elements are not truly opposing but are rather suspended between
categories.
In order to bring these various philosophical systems together, this work
utilises several science fiction texts ranging from feminist utopian and dys-
topian novels to mainstream sf film and TV; I use these texts as a means of ana-
lysing the portrayal of women in the increasingly important and popular genre
of sf: one which often reveals much about the changing position of women in
a world whose relationship with sf narratives is becoming increasingly blurred.
With the recent rapid advancement of technology and its profound effect on
our lives, Donna Haraway’s famous quote from her Cyborg Manifesto that
“the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion”
(149) becomes ever more prescient and significant.
4
Binaries, Uncertainties, Selfhood

Some would argue that a binary understanding of gender, which gives rise to
essentialist conceptualisations of women, is rooted in the second wave. From
the second wave certainly sprung a specific type of feminist politics invested
in a notion of sisterhood and female unity, informed by a homogenous con-
ceptualisation of womanhood, standing in binary opposition to a unified,
male, patriarchal force. Speaking about radical feminist writers, Lisa Disch
and Mary Hawksworth note that: “[R]‌adical feminism alone emerged … as
a freestanding critique of the ‘mindcuffs of phallogocentricsm,’ an attempt to
achieve a thorough repudiation of ‘malestream thought,’ and to diagnose the
‘l’homm(o)sexualité’ characteristic of Western philosophy” (Hawkesworth
and Disch 2).
The radical approach which is seen to characterise much second- wave
feminism offered a deeply necessary antithetical approach to rethinking
patriarchal structures: it is and should be celebrated for its uncompromising
attitude towards the struggle for equality and its contention that patriarchy is
not simply something to which we must add women and stir –rather, that the
fundamentally masculine structures upon which our culture is founded must be
radically challenged and broken down. Yet, this model is susceptible to binary
assumptions: that is, that men and women exist in the world as unified groups
with homogenous interests which are, necessarily and fundamentally, at odds.
It is a system which fails to divorce the individual experience of existing (as
women/men or identities in between), from the wider masculine and feminine
social structures which influence but do not entirely constitute us as people.
The notion of the woman defined by patriarchy as a universal other has
formed the basis of a certain type of feminist politics of collectivism and com-
munity based on a shared marginalisation. As Rosi Braidotti makes clear,
however, this conceptualisation was influenced by a dialectical oppositional,
humanist model:
This creates on the theoretical level a productive synthesis of self and

others. Politically, the Vitruvius female forced a bond of solidarity between
one and many, which in the hands of the second feminist wave in the
1960s was to grow into a principle of the political sisterhood. This posits
a common grounding among women, talking being-women-in-the-world
as the starting point for all critical reflection and jointly articulated polit-
ical praxis.
(21–22)
However, this ideal of woman as a kind of nascent figure of the many and of
the universal marginal subject is not without its contradictions. The eman-
cipation of the marginalised individual is, within this model, to be achieved
through a politics of shared interest: a conflation of the specific and the gen-
eral. As some feminists, gender and queer theorists have since pointed out,
there is little room within this conceptualisation for the multitude of various
5

selves included in the category of woman (women who belong to many other
categories: racial, sexual, political, geographical, cultural, economical).
The turn away from the humanist, masculine subject was partly influenced by
developments within the French school of psychoanalysis and post-structuralist
philosophy which also gave rise to a bifurcation within feminist discourse,
broadly, between French and Anglo-American modes of feminism. The Anglo-
American feminists have traditionally resisted claims about any kind of female
essentialism –or investigations into the nature of woman as such –insisting on
a clear distinction between femininity and female and focusing their analysis
on economic and social disparity between men and women.
The French post-structuralist feminists have generally concerned themselves
with metaphysical questions relating to gender. Heavily influenced by psycho-
analytic theory, the pillars of French feminist discourse, Helene Cixous, Julia
Kristeva and Luce Irigaray, have written on that which is particular to “female-
ness”: seemingly acknowledging the way patriarchy shapes and influences
female psychology, while also often insisting on a specifically female mode
of being. While it has led to a sometimes unnecessarily wholesale rejection of
French feminist philosophy, the Anglo-American suspicion of any essentialist
discourse is in some ways well founded: “women have historically been equated
with their bodies and thus seen in the history of philosophy, more as extended
rather than as thinking things. To the extent that women are equated with their
bodies, they are put on the wrong end of the Cartesian map of human iden-
tity” (McAfee 81). By blurring the boundary between biology and society (the
Cartesian mind-body split) and focusing on the bodily aspects of female being
and experience, we risk falling into the very same logic of biological deter-
minism which has been historically used as justification for women’s subjuga-
tion and evidence for their inferiority to masculine rationality and intelligence.
Yet, while we must acknowledge this danger, ignoring the specificity of
human identity as influenced by gendered experiences (whether brought forth
by biological, social or other factors) is as limiting as adopting a purely essen-
tialist understanding of gender. We are not in ourselves embodiments of uni-
versal ideas of men and women. But neither are our lives totally divorced from
these concepts. None of us lives up to all conceptualisations of that which is
biologically male/female, just as none of us are composed solely of our male/
female socialisations. We are each a strange concoction of elements taken from
various sources. Our individual existence is suspended somewhere between the
universal woman/man and the individual woman/man that we ourselves are.
While generally seeming to eschew essentialism, Anglo-American feminist
practice also seems to introduce a binary understanding of sexual difference by
the backdoor. There is still a tendency to champion traditionally feminine virtues
of care-giving, emotional understanding and empathy. While intersectionality
has done much of the work of problematising the binary of self/other, the
dichotomy of individual/collective or general/particular persists. And the ideal
of women working together for the benefit of the collective whole is influenced
and tainted by the very same paradigm that is informed and bolstered by patri-
archy: that is, that women exist not for themselves, but for others.
6

By shunning the individual, humanist subject, feminism has in some ways
repudiated the progressive strides made towards an understanding of women
as autonomous, self-governing subjects whose interests and desires can be
recognised as culturally, politically viable and worthy of recognition. This turn
away from the humanist individual is largely because of the subject’s masculine
associations; the autonomous self is, for many, irredeemably patriarchal. Toril
Moi, in her 1985 work Sexual/Textual Politics, wrote:
Traditional humanism … is in effect part of patriarchal ideology … as

Luce Irigaray or Hélène Cixous would argue, this integrated self is in fact
a phallic self, constructed on the model of the self-contained, powerful
phallus … In this humanist ideology the self is the sole author of his-
tory and of the literary text: the humanist creator is potent, phallic and
male –God in relation to his world, the author in relation to his text … the
text is reduced to a passive, “feminine” reflection of an unproblematically
“given,” “masculine” world or self.
(Moi 8)
While the conception of the individual, unified subject as a tool for dismissing
that which is non-male (and often non-white and non-straight as well) should
be discredited, the implied dismissal of individual selfhood attached to this cri-
tique risks diminishing the individuality of women, recognised as self-determining
agents. The frequent portrayal of the self as a purely masculine and irredeemable
tool of patriarchy in some ways fails to acknowledge the multiplicity of persons
which feminist politics seeks to represent. Yet the implications of such a phil-
osophy are to deny women today many of the rights historically sought after by
women who were themselves denied the opportunity to be selves in their own
right, to paraphrase Toril Moi, “to be the author in relation to [her] text” (Moi 8).
In her work, Selfish Women, Lisa Downing similarly argues that “ ‘self-
interest,’ ‘self-
regard,’ ‘self-
actualisation’ –may be, not only tangentially
expedient for a feminist political project in the twenty-first century, but pro-
grammatically necessary to it.” Here she offers the term “ ‘self-fullness,’ as both
the direct antonym of what women are traditionally exhorted to be –‘selfless’ –
and as a value-judgement-free alternative to selfishness” (3). Downing’s book
delivers a deeply necessary argument for women and the feminist movement to
reclaim selfhood for the benefit of the individuals which make up the category
of women –acknowledging the multiplicity within the category of woman and
at the same time acknowledging the inclusivity of the word as describing both
sameness and difference. Where the sameness ends and the difference begins
is a matter which essentialist and constructionist feminists have debated hotly
for many years: which aspects of what we call “Woman” or “feminine” are
manufactured and/or imposed? And what can be seen as, in some way “essen-
tial,” and therefore, shared? Final answers to these questions are probably
beyond the scope of this work; however, I argue that we might come closer
to understanding the nature of man and woman by first acknowledging that
neither the masculine/feminine binary nor the collective/individual binary can
7

any longer be understood as stable: that both dichotomies should instead be
problematised and exposed as indistinct.
What Lisa Downing describes as the “ghost which haunts feminism” is
acknowledged in a similar way in Judith Butler’s acclaimed work Gender
Trouble: “contemporary feminist debates over the meanings of gender lead
time and again to a certain sense of trouble, as if the indeterminacy of gender
might eventually culminate in the failure of feminism” (xxix). This opening
phrase in the 1990 preface is a reference to the uneasy relationship between
feminist philosophy as a whole and the sex/gender binary upon which much
feminist criticism has been founded. There seems to be a desire, from both the
constructionist and essentialist sides of the debate, to pin down gender and sex
once and for all: at one extreme end of the scale there is an attempt to con-
cretise a specific image of Woman as an exemplar –a symbol around which to
rally politically and philosophically; at the other extreme end, there is an insist-
ence on gender as purely socially constructed. While I am more in agreement
with the latter extreme, it is clear from developments in gender and queer
theory research, from LGBTQI experiences, and the emergence of transgender
philosophy that there is more going on than social conditioning: that there are
processes occurring in the experience of gender that cannot be attributed to
any one sole source, be that social construction, biology, physicality or sexu-
ality. We are still in the process of ‘locating’ gender: finding its ‘edges’ in order
to better understand how it functions.
Biopower and Bare Life: New Conceptualisations of Gender

The first chapter of this book will provide a detailed exploration of my approach
to gender analysis, which uses Agamben’s paradigmatic system as a framework
for approaching the structure of gender as a biopolitical phenomenon, along-
side feminist and queer theorists Judith Butler, Jack Halberstam and Monique
Wittig. Agamben’s system recognises that power structures, which he terms
paradigms, are fluid categories: allowing for social and political constructions
to be recognised as both real and present in the world while also being –to
an extent –insubstantial and therefore capable of radical change as a result of
their unstable nature. As Agamben writes in The Signature of All Things: “the
paradigmatic case becomes such by suspending and, at the same time, exposing
its belonging to the group, so that it is never possible to separate its exemplarity
from its singularity” (Signature 31). The paradigm is composed of an oppos-
ition. One of Agamben’s most famous examples is the opposition of politics
and biology in the paradigm of life, which he traces back to the ancient Greek
concepts of bios and zoe. As with all paradigms, the one of life is suspended –
that is, the supposedly oppositional ideas which make up the paradigm, ‘life,’
are, in reality, indistinct, and binary oppositions are not binaries at all: rather,
the concepts bleed into one another. We may imagine that life is something
that can be divided into public political life and private dominion over one’s
biological existence. But in truth the state is invested in regulating our bio-
logical processes, namely sexual reproduction, and this is regulated through
8

the system of heteronormativity. The state’s investment in gender roles is per-
haps most strikingly shown by how difficult it is in most countries around
the world for transgender people to legally change their gender status. One
could point to a number of other examples, however: the historical and current
regulation throughout the world of sexual practices which deviate from the
heteronormative model, including the persecution of LGBTQI persons, the
state regulation of surrogacy whereby many countries have made it illegal for
LGBT individuals to complete the surrogacy process.
Very strangely, the implications of biopolitics in relation to state regu-
lation of sex and gender have not been discussed directly by Agamben. As
Catherine Mills has argued, Agamben unfortunately remains rather blind to
the implications of his research in terms of gender and sexuality (124), despite
coming extremely close to discussing both these topics in many of his works –
particularly in his work The Use of Bodies. As one of the founding fathers of
biopolitics, it is strange to see such a notable absence in relation to the regula-
tion of bodies in his philosophical enquiry. Yet, Agamben’s lack of engagement
with gender and sexuality should not prevent us from utilising the value of his
paradigmatic system, which maps usefully onto sex and gender.
Agamben’s philosophy is innovative in that it challenges rather than relies
upon the categories of self and other. The paradigm “is a singular object that,
standing equally for all others of the same class, defines the intelligibility of the
group of which it is a part and which, at the same time it constitutes” (Signature
31). It stands for the specific case as well as the universal. Viewing gender as
a paradigm, we can see how man is constructed as a universal case, the trad-
itional conceptualisation of human subjectivity, woman is constructed as the
specific, inferior case whose identity is ultimately in service to male supremacy.
The categories of male and female can also be mapped onto the binary of zoe
and bios within the paradigm of life –with Man seen as constituting political,
public life while Woman is associated with the sphere of the domestic, private
life and crucially, biological life. Similar to the concept of life, gender is truly
suspended between the categories of male and female, so that the distinctions
between the two become blurred. Our current historical moment reflects such
a suspension between the identities of male and female, as evidenced by a vast
range of gender and sexual identities being acknowledged, the emergence of
transgender philosophy as well as worldwide political activism of transgender
rights. We are living in a moment of what we might call gender inoperativity,
to use Agamben’s term. This term delineates a breaking point for paradigms –a
moment when the binary opposition breaks down and is exposed as indistinct.
The paradigm then ceases to operate.
Science fiction narratives provide many valuable studies of gender
inoperativity through their capacity to engage with alien or posthuman
concepts of self and other. Sherryl Vint argues in her work Bodies of Tomorrow:
“SF is particularly suited to exploring the question of the posthuman because
it is a discourse that allows us to concretely imagine bodies and selves other-
wise, a discourse defined by its ability to estrange our commonplace percep-
tion of reality” (19). Furthermore, Vint acknowledges that “the new selves SF
9

might help us imagine are both the problematic selves and the unexpected
others … they remind us of the fragility of our boundary-making work and
that the Other always is an aspect of self made problematic” (21). Agamben’s
understanding of the paradigm reflects these sentiments. The paradigm is
made up of a dichotomy of universal and particular, the biological self and
the universal public persona or digital avatar, the self and the Other. Science
fiction, particularly when it deals explicitly with concepts of sex and gender, is
biopolitical fiction.
This intersection between biopolitics, science fiction and gender theory is
illustrated by many works of science fiction literature, including Theodore
Sturgen’s novel Venus Plus X, which describes a society of humans who have
genetically altered themselves to become hermaphroditic. In the novel, Charlie
Johns is a visitor to the society of Ledom and when he discovers the full
extent of the sexual, physical alterations the Ledomites have undergone, he
has the following reaction: “He had a vision of Laura, of all women … of all
men. Biology, he remembered irreverently; they used to use the astronomical
symbols for Mars and Venus for male and female … What in the hell would
they use for these? Mars plus y? Venus plus x! Saturn turned upsidedown?”
(Sturgeon 62). What is fascinating about this passage, from which the novel’s
title is derived, is the notion of this “x” added to the Venus. Charlie cannot
conceive of gender without both sexes –he cannot conceive of men without
women or, more properly given the reference to “Venus,” of women without
men. This reflects the operation of the paradigm which exists as suspended
between two opposing elements –in this case, male and female, Venus and
Mars. But Charlie cannot conceive of a gender or sex in isolation –he must
imagine at least a portion of the other embedded in the new gender-neutral
Ledom identity: the “x” that is suspended between the categories of male and
female. It is also telling that Charlie imagines Laura as part of a vision of “all
women” and then “all men”: the specific case, Laura, is bound up irrevocably
with the universal.
However, Sturgeon’s use of the pronoun “he” to describe the Ledom people
has been criticised for, seemingly, masculinising a people whose gender iden-
tity is quite removed from our current human conceptualisations. The same
critique has been levelled at Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and
Anne Leckie’s Ancillary Justice trilogy, both of which use gendered pronouns
to describe “genderless” societies. However, I believe such criticisms fail to
acknowledge how the authors use pronouns to play with reader’s expectations.
In Venus Plus X the use of the male pronoun “he” is appropriate because it
indicates Charlie’s own inability to escape gendered constructions –in order
to cope with the indistinct gender identities of the Ledom people he thinks of
them all as men –the Ledom people thus take on a universal, male subjectivity,
another hallmark of the gender paradigm which designates male as a universal
identity –Charlie would not think to imagine a race of “women.” Similarly,
for LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, the human observer, Genly Ai, of the
androgynous planet of Gethen finds the inhabitants impossible to comprehend
on their own terms: “I was still far from being able to see the people of the
01

planet through their own eyes. I tried to but my efforts took the form of self-
consciously seeing a Gethenian first as a man, then as a woman, forcing him
into those categories so irrelevant to his nature and so essential to my own”
(ch. 1) (my emphasis). Genly Ai is brought face to face with the suspended
quality of gender here, forced to acknowledge that gender is a slippery concept
that characterises individuals often more by assumption that physical fact. As
Justine Larbalestier argues:
To render the people of Gethen intelligible, Genly turns them into men.
But he is never comfortable with this move, and it keeps sliding out of
his grasp because the Gethens are neither male nor female, and they will
not stay fixed as Genly would have them. He is forced to think about his
assumptions about male and female.
(99)
and the reader is forced to do the same. Anne Leckie’s Ancillary Justice trilogy
portrays a galactic empire whose language “does not mark gender in any way”
(3), and to account for this, Leckie uses the pronoun “she” to describe all
characters. Just as with The Left Hand of Darkness, this forces the reader to
question their various assumptions about gender –this is particularly effective
because the society described is not totally without gender but simply places
less emphasis on it. Thus, the reader is invited to imagine, not a genderless
or sexless society as such (as in the case of Venus Plus X or The Left Hand
of Darkness) but rather a kind of post- gender society where actions and
behaviours are not irrevocably marked by current, traditional associations.
The Battle of Sexes

Having discussed in detail my methodological approach to gender analysis in
science fiction texts, Chapter 2 of this book will explore some classic works of
feminist sf literature from the second-wave era. For this portion of my analysis
I have chosen Marge Peircy’s He, She and It, Joanna Russ’s The Female Man
and Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve. I have chosen these texts because
of how well I believe they reflect some of the problematic ideology within
feminist thought that I have outlined. While each of these novels plays interest-
ingly with gender, each of them seems to challenge gender constructions with
one hand while in some ways reinforcing them with the other. They represent
a sub-genre of feminist science fiction literature which depicts often all-female
societies, standing in opposition to other patriarchal worlds –what Justine
Larbalestier terms “battle-of-the-sexes” texts. In these novels the societies are
depicted as strong and efficient, thus the stereotype of passive, weak-minded
femaleness is re-imagined: caregiving, strength of community and motherhood
assume different connotations. However, many of these societies achieve this
by simultaneously appropriating constructions of femininity.
In Marge Piercy’s He, She and It, the Jewish “Free Town” of Tikva (one
of the few areas of this future society not controlled by a corporation) is
1

characterised by its unusual concern (compared to the rest of this future world)
for gender equality as well as its highly feminised aspects: it is a small agri-
cultural society focused on values of community and family, dominated by
the masculine corporate dystopian landscape that surrounds it. Similarly, the
all-female planet of Whileaway, in Joanna Russ’s The Female Man, though
not without violence or aggression, is characterised by a preoccupation with
farming and cultivation and a deference towards nature and the pastoral.
The planet’s name, Whileaway (reminiscent of the phrase “to while away the
time”), suggests a passive acceptance of the passage of time; the women of this
planet are not explorers, seekers or pursuers of improved efficiency, rather they
amble through life with a feminine air of resignation, never wishing for more
than they have. The troubling thing about the societies depicted in these two
novels is not its celebration of traditionally feminine traits but rather its failure
to depict female characters, desires and achievements outside of a traditionally
feminine framework: womanhood and female identity are not portrayed in all
their true complexity and variety.
Lastly, Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve includes the all-female
society of Beulah, composed of strong, violent, warrior-women inspired by a
terrifying “goddess” figure called “Mother” to violently retaliate against men.
They plan to castrate men and forcibly turn them into women in order pos-
ition themselves mythically as creators rather than merely the creations of the
supreme masculine mythic figure: God. This society’s strength is founded on its
realisation of the classic objects of masculine fear –castration, female sexuality
and female volatility. Their plan to destroy mankind in order to raise Woman
out of oppression is a tacit acceptance of the biological determinism that fuels
and empowers patriarchal discourse; that is, that women are biologically and
physically inferior to men, who are their biologically determined masters. The
brutal notion that only the destruction of the male and the masculine can
bring about female emancipation merely reinforces the perceived inferiority of
womankind and further entrenches the divide between the sexes created and
maintained by patriarchal power structures.
Each of these novels attempts to reappropriate the female/ feminine by
imbuing it with signifiers of power. Yet each of these emancipating gestures
is complicated by its proximity to the original paradigm of patriarchy. The
myths of womanhood that these novels, in part, perpetuate are components
of the oppressive patriarchal paradigm they seek to condemn. It is a contra-
diction to imply an essentialist gender binarism while vying for equality of the
sexes; essentialism is the language of patriarchy, and feminist opposition pol-
itics is capitulation to the same dichotomous reasoning that consolidates male
domination and privilege. Narratives of this kind, and the feminist discourse
they reflect, feed into a damaging conceptualisation of essential womanhood
based on notions of female victimhood. Carter’s novel actively seeks to erase
the male and masculine in favour of the female and feminine; this approach
not only lacks nuance but also simultaneously erases liminal and ambiguous
gender identities: for example, those masculine female identities which Jack
Halberstam explores in their work Female Masculinities: “the stone butch, for
21

example, in her self-definition as a non-feminine, sexually untouchable female,
complicates the idea that lesbians share female sexual practices or women share
sexual desires or even that masculine women share a sense of what animates
their particular masculinities” (21).
These works reflect the problematic essentialist, binary ways of
conceptualising gender, and often rely on a narrative of women versus men;
some – The Passion of New Eve and The Female Man –even depict physical
wars between men and women as opposing sides of a bloody organised con-
flict. The novels also contain female characters with traditionally female traits
of passivity, emotional intelligence, a strong instinct for caregiving and nurt-
uring; these are glorified in the novels as exemplars of female being, as shared
traits of universal womanly experience. As I have argued above, a feminism
founded on difference and held together by a powerful narrative of sister-
hood further entrenches traditional conceptualisations of gender. This kind of
feminism, rooted in essentialist understandings of gender, relies on the very
same dichotomy of male and female as separate entities, unified by shared
biological and mental traits, which patriarchy has historically relied upon in
order to maintain control over women. Like Donna Haraway, I argue that the
cyborg figure can help us to reimagine current power structures and discursive
practices, specifically what Haraway describes as “taxonomies of feminism
[which] produce epistemologies to police deviation from official women’s
experience” (“Cyborg Manifesto” 156). The emergence of the gender crit-
ical movement, invested in maintaining strict definitions of womanhood, is
a telling development that speaks to the truly damaging influence of binary
conceptualisations of gender.
On Cyborgs and Gynoids

The current desire to defend a kind of sexual purity of female being, emerging
from some more regressive forms of feminist politics, seems to stem from both
extremes of feminist discourse: both essentialist and constructionist feminists
seem deeply invested in a rigid mind/ body split. Elizabeth Grosz argues:
“Feminists and philosophers seem to share a common view of the human
subject as a being made up of two dichotomously opposed characteristics:
mind and body, thought and extension, reason and passion, psychology and
biology” (3). Onto this paradigm of mind versus body, patriarchy has success-
fully mapped Man onto the superior sphere of universal reason and woman
onto the inferior sphere of the body. However, Vint comments that “the body
occupies a liminal space between self and not-self, between nature and culture,
between the inner authentic person and social persona” (16). Vint and Grosz
interpret the body in line with Judith Butler’s analysis, arguing that “the body
has its invariably public dimension” (Undoing Gender 21). Butler understands
gender to be performative, repetitive, existing between categories rather than
as a fixed entity; it is a composite series of gestures and effects as opposed
to a continuous and homogenous concept. In science fiction, the boundary
that the body represents between self and other is often problematised. The
31

body is continually reimagined in science fiction as: interface in cyberpunk
fiction, alien hybrid in, for example, Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy, or
as cyborg. The cyborg figure, celebrated and popularised by Donna Haraway’s
“A Cyborg Manifesto,” is a hybrid which crosses boundaries of race, gender
and technology (155). Butler, Vint and Grosz all agree that the body is a thing
suspended between the public persona and the private self. This is crucial for
an understanding of gender that evolves beyond the essentialist/constructionist
binary of sex and gender. Agamben’s understanding of life as a paradigm
composed of zoe (biological life) and bios (political life) allows us to further
conceptualise the body as suspended between public and private, between
personal existence and political control (Sacer 1).
Donna Haraway’s understanding of the cyborg as a symbol of that powerful
ambiguity can help us to further conceptualise the suspended qualities of the
body. The manner in which the cyborg body is very literally and viscerally
mediated by technology reinforces the liminality of all bodies, with or without
prostheses or interfaces. For Haraway, cyborg feminism is a practice as well
as an identity, standing as an alternative to other forms of feminist discourse:
“Cyborg feminists have to argue that ‘we’ do not want any more natural matrix
of unity and that no construction is whole” (Cyborg Manifesto 157).
Much scholarship has been published on the posthuman figure of the
cyborg in literature, film and video games. Analyses of the cyborg figure have
offered the opportunity to reconceptualise human experience as fundamen-
tally technologically mediated both physically and psychologically, examining
both the negative and positive aspects of every individual’s ‘cyborg’ experi-
ence of reality. The cyborg figure represents, for Haraway, the ways in which
our existence has been forever altered by often exploitative technological
practices; yet our resulting cyborg existence holds the potential for eman-
cipation and equality by eroding established hegemonic boundaries such as
those of race and gender. In this regard, Carlen Lavigne’s analyses Haraway’s
possibly overly optimistic and rather ill-defined portrayal of the cyborg: “the
cyborg is a nebulous and unstructured image, representing the potential for
apocalypse as well as new forms of being” (83). In this way, Haraway’s cyborg
can be read as a kind of Deleuzian, rhizomatic multiplicity –a force that
is as full of vitality and potential as negativity and destruction, capable of
breaking down established structures but providing no concrete framework
for something new.
This is problematic because it lacks specificity and so risks offering more
than it can deliver: that is, while the cyborg has the potential to challenge
patriarchal structures, it does not necessarily offer a viable new conceptual-
isation for moving beyond those structures. As Lavigne argues further: “when
a cyborg becomes recognisably human, it is unable to challenge the human
stereotypes, classifications and expectations guiding its performance –as, in
order to become recognisably human, the cyborg must behave in predictable
ways and operate according to dominant social norms, thus abandoning its
own potential for liminality” (83). I cannot agree fully with this interpret-
ation of the cyborg, as I do not think that the cyborg is necessarily grounded
41

entirely in stereotypes; the cyborg does operate within certain recognisably
human boundaries, but it may also challenge those boundaries and expose
their fragility in doing so. The role of the cyborg is not necessarily to abandon
stereotypes entirely but to introduce ambiguity. However, I would argue that a
more concrete methodology is required for the cyborg figure to be a truly valu-
able figure in feminist and gender theory. I also contend that there is a deeper
ambiguity at work within the specifically female cyborg, which Agamben’s as
well as Deleuze’s systems can be used to unlock.
Alongside works of feminist sf, such as C.L. Moore’s “No Woman Born”,
I will throughout the book also be exploring texts whose portrayal of women
and gynoids is not explicitly feminist in their scope but which, nevertheless,
exposes the paradigm of gender at work as well as its suspended nature. In
Chapter 3, I will explore how some works sometimes unintentionally expose
the fragility, the indistinction, of the gender paradigm through the gynoid fig-
ures they portray: particularly I will focus on Star Trek: Voyager’s cyborg char-
acter, Seven of Nine.
Agamben’s system provides a valuable and insightful framework for
understanding the intricacies of gender. However, it does not necessarily pro-
vide a framework for reimagining new possible systems that might replace
the old. Deleuze’s philosophy offers, in my opinion, a more concrete method
for imagining new frameworks which can be used to envision how gender
may develop in the future. This book will use Agamben’s radical and intricate
concept of inoperativity as well as Deleuze’s theory of assemblages and his
concept of the Body without Organs (BwO), as products of his wider system
of becoming through difference and repetition. I will examine how Deleuze’s
understanding of becoming opens up new ways of envisioning how gender
may develop as a cultural and political construct.
Becoming-Woman, Becoming-Gynoid
It is important to recognise that the concept of indistinction, indifference or
inoperativity (words which I will use interchangeably throughout this book)
originated not in the work of Agamben but in an essay entitled “Bartleby; Or,
the Formula” by Deleuze. The essay relates to a short story, “Bartleby The
Scrivener,” by Herman Melville, in which a clerk declines to complete his work,
repeating the sentence: “I would prefer not to.” Deleuze argues that these words
create a linguistic zone of “indetermination”: “the formula is devastating
because it eliminates the preferable just as mercilessly as any non-preferred
… in fact, it renders them indistinct. It hollows out a zone of indiscernibility”
(“Bartleby” 71). Deleuze’s analysis would later be further developed by
Agamben in relation to his work on the nature of potentiality and inoperativity
in his own essay written on the same work: “Bartleby, or On Contingency.”
They both worked along very similar lines when theorising about the ‘gap’
between categories, though Agamben would go on to develop his concept into
a more extensive framework in which indistinction becomes part of a much
51

larger paradigmatic system. Both thinkers understood indistinction as both a
process by which categories dissolve and a space of linguistic indeterminacy
that can be charged with pure potential. It is on this plane of indifference and
potentiality that Agamben and Deleuze connect with each other. For Agamben,
it is the pit of inoperativity that yields the rewards of humanity’s pure poten-
tiality. The “I prefer not to” opens a chasm between action and inaction –a
place of suspension characterised by impotentiality that gives true power to
raw potentiality. Accordingly, Chapters 4 and 5 will focus on how Deleuze’s
philosophy can be said to continue Agamben’s own ideas about undecidability/
inoperativity and imagine the next step in the process –elaborating further
on the processes that bring possibilities into reality. Delving into this system
offers new avenues for imagining how biopolitical constructs like gender might
evolve in the future as well as providing a deeper understanding of how our
current gender frameworks came into being.
Both Deleuze and Agamben imagine reality as a network of ‘apparatuses’
that fluctuate both temporally and spatially –that is, their meanings and
uses shift over time and within each given society in which they function.
For Agamben the network is made up of paradigms, for Deleuze they are
assemblages –arrangements (agencements) (Livesey 18). Divided into two
axes, the horizontal component of the assemblage is a “machinic assemblage
of bodies, of actions and passions, an intermingling of bodies reacting to one
another, and on the other hand it is a collective assemblage of enunciation,
of acts and statements, of incorporeal transformations attributed to bodies”
(Deleuze and Guattari, Plateaus 102– 3). The vertical component includes
“both territorial sides, or reterritorialized sides, which stabilise it, and cutting
edges of deterritorialization, which carry it away” (103). These assemblages
are not fixed entities, rather they are constantly in a process of reformation;
they restructure themselves continuously as reality is altered in its construc-
tion over time. Agamben’s paradigms are similarly fluid. Having “no origin,
or arche …every phenomenon is the origin, very image archaic” (Agamben,
Signatures 31). The eternal altering of these assemblages, forever producing
new combinations, new ontological and epistemological machines is Deleuze’s
system of difference and repetition, in which the virtual is understood as an
inexhaustible engine of difference capable of producing endless methods of
becoming.
Deleuze’s virtual is very similar to Agamben’s potentiality –as consisting
of potentiality and impotentiality. However, these terms are by no means syn-
onymous; Agamben’s potentiality can be seen as the beginning, the setting
in motion, of Deleuze’s more concrete blueprint for change. However, we
cannot view these stages as confined to rigid sections in a linear process.
Reterritorialisation is heavily inclined to give way to deterritorialisation, cre-
ating a circular process. Agamben’s philosophy offers new insight into the pro-
cess of deterritorialisation, how assemblages (or paradigms) are broken down
leaving in their ruins the foundation, the potential, for the new or, more accur-
ately, pure difference.
61

Furthermore, for Deleuze, a book (for my purposes a sf novel) can be
considered itself as an assemblage:
As an assemblage, a book has only itself, in connection with other

assemblages …. We will never ask what a book means, as signified or sig-
nifier; we will not look for anything to understand in it. We will ask what
it functions with, in connection with what other things it does or does not
transmit intensities, in which other multiplicities its own are inserted and
metamorphosed.
(Deleuze and Guattari, Plateaus 2)
The book, the assemblage, can only be understood in relation to other assemblages,
and thus it is only within the wider context of our reality, composed of a vast
network of assemblages, that the individual ‘machine’ becomes intelligible. It is
only through our knowledge of other book machines –of the linguistic machine,
that constructs literary and linguistic conventions –that we can comprehend the
text of the book and come to form an interpretation and understand its purpose
as a machine. I think we can extrapolate that this applies not only to books, but
all ‘texts,’ including TV, film and video games –all of which are forms which
depend on a wider contextual understanding of format, genre and narrative in
order to be intelligible. The purpose of the text, and its interpretation, fluctuates
from person to person depending on the other texts or contextual assemblages
the reader has already encountered. Thus the text assemblage never contains a
single meaning; in fact, it means nothing when considered in isolation: “when
one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can
be plugged into, must be plugged into in order to work” (Deleuze and Guattari,
Plateaus 3). It is this characteristic of the assemblage that relates to the other side
of this machine and that encourages change and resists homogeneity –a term
developed by Deleuze and Guattari called the BwO. This element of the assem-
blage faces away from “the strata, which doubtless make it a kind of organism,
or signifying totality” (Plateaus 2) and acts to “[dismantle] the organism, causing
asignifying particles or pure intensities to pass or circulate” (2). The BwO con-
tinually forces the assemblage to alter and reform such that all the ‘machines’
that make up our reality are constantly and repeatedly shifting, dismantling and
reforming to produce perpetual difference.
The BwO is the manifestation, the machinic functioning of desire the “plane
of consistency specific to desire,” (Deleuze and Guattari, Plateaus 178), the force
that Deleuze and Guattari describe as “a process of production without refer-
ence to any exterior agency, whether it be a lack that hollows it out or a pleasure
that fills it” (178). Contrary to the traditional psychoanalytic understanding of
desire, as based on oedipal lack, Deleuze and Guattari developed the concept of
the BwO as a way of viewing desire as a “productive machine” (Message 37),
capable of producing valuable and necessary disruption of existing institutions
as well as new methods of becoming: “the order of desire is the order of produc-
tion; all production is at once desiring-production and social production. We
71

therefore reproach psychoanalysis for having stifled this order of production,
for having shunted it into representation” (Deleuze and Guattari, Plateaus 326).
However, the term becomes more convoluted as Deleuze and Guattari also
divulge that the BwO is also “always swinging between the surfaces that stratify
it and the plane that sets it free” (187). The stratified, unified section of the
assemblage grounds the BwO, preventing unbridled, gratuitous destratification.
Thus the BwO, like the assemblage, is related to the establishment while also
acting as a transgressive force –an engine for creating difference.
In line with Lavigne’s analysis of the cyborg as “representing the potential
for apocalypse as well as new forms of being” (83), we can see that the cyborg
constitutes a BwO or a line of flight. Its ambiguity and pure potentiality mean
that it can be utilised for imagining new progressive futures or perhaps equally
to reinforce existing structures. Speaking about the advertising practices of the
1970s, Lisa Yaszek discusses depictions of technologically mediated bodies in
media representations:
These narratives seemed to reinforce dominant understandings of the sub-

ject as an autonomous, organic being in full control of its own productive
vision. On the other hand, they implicitly defined the subject as masculine;
in contrast, feminine identity was relegated to an objectified body that
was transformed into a complex but nonetheless controllable aggregate of
machinelike parts available for de-and re-assembly.
(ch. 2)
It is unsurprising that this consumer culture formed the context out of which
Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives emerged. A persistent image of woman as
assemblage, as machine entity for mass consumption exists in media and our
daily interactions with technology: from Maria in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to
Alexa; from Siri to Westworld; from the Hanson Sophia robot to Gatebox’s
Azuma Hikari, the virtual assistant that doubles as a virtual girlfriend. While
these figures carry negative, sexist associations, the cyborg and, particularly,
the female cyborg figure have the capacity to reimagine these associations, to
“engage with and begin to rewire the circuits of desire” (Yaszek ch. 2) which
traditionally oppressively regulate the female body.
In line with this reasoning, a particular line of flight I will analyse is a phe-
nomenon that Deleuze and Guattari term becoming-woman. This process
originates with the figure of a “girl”: Deleuze and Guattari examine the dis-
ruptive and curious position of the girl/woman as an incongruous element
suspended in a patriarchal world:
Thus girls do not belong to an age group, sex, order, or kingdom: they slip
in everywhere, between orders, acts, ages, sexes; they produce n molecular
sexes on the line of flight in relation to the dualism machines they cross
right through.
(Plateaus 322–323)
81

In Agamben’s terms, the girl is the concrete manifestation of the suspended
state of Woman: an indistinct category within the binary construction of
gender.
The nature of woman, constructed as a universal other, makes the female
presence unexpectedly powerful in an antipatriarchal sense. In the context of
science fiction text, the reader is confronted by a specific form of cognitive
estrangement: The girl/woman in a far future or otherwise alien context is a
question in and of herself: what does the concept of Woman constitute in world
of this sf text? Does the code, ‘woman,’, mean the same in this narrative world
as it does in our reality? Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming-woman
perfectly describes the position of Woman in sf. Women are double agents
in what is often a patriarchal setting –bound by the gender constructions/
expectations placed upon them by both reader and author and yet unpredict-
able. The “girl,” acts as a “block of becoming that remains contemporaneous
to each opposable term, man, woman, child, adult” (Plateaus 323) or even
human, machine and animal –the focal “others” of the narrative that com-
plicate and expand upon more “traditional oppositions” of man and woman,
adult and child, etc.
Becoming-woman describes how a masculine world can be altered through
the presence of women or through the presence of the feminine/female. When
women began to enter the workplace on a large scale, traditionally mascu-
line places were –by increments –transformed. The gendered machines that
had held men in the assemblage of the workplace, the office, now had to be
modified to accommodate women in one way or another. Because woman
is constructed as the universal other, she is ill-defined (in comparison to her
male-counterpart) and so can adapt to different environments. As the world
becomes less and less defined by a fixed conceptualisation of masculinity and
male power, the assemblages that make up that world are shifting and being
remade in the image of those that are taking up new positions of power:
namely women. However, I believe we are now in a new cultural moment that
goes beyond the process of becoming-woman. As our existence becomes more
and technologically mediated, the assemblages which make up our current
social and political frameworks are being modified not by becoming-woman
but rather by what I term becoming-gynoid. In Chapter 4, I examine Deleuze
and Guattari’s notion of becoming-woman in relation to key examples in sf lit-
erature from different time periods which portray the evolution of the female
cyborg, or gynoid over time, including E.T.A Hoffman’s “Der Sandmann” and
C.L. Moore’s “No Woman Born.”
One of the most iconic visual female cyborg images in popular culture and
media is the gynoid replicant Rachael Tyrel of the Blade Runner films, one of
two central female characters who are also robots or “replicants”: the audi-
ence is constantly made to wonder about Rachael’s nature. Her manner is
mechanical and often difficult to read, due to its blandness. Her initial pene-
trating stare into the camera as Deckard performs the “Voight-Kampff” test on
her (to determine whether she is a replicant) is as ambiguous as it is unsettling.
Her apparently soulless stare is juxtaposed with the many shots of a large,
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wish of once more beholding his relations, and to the force of such a plea
rather than to his reasoning, Sebastian reluctantly conceded the permission
he sought.
The letter for Braganza was given to Gaspar, who prepared for instant
departure from Messina.
“This is a time of joy, honored Sire!” exclaimed he, as he knelt to receive
the parting benediction of his master, “why then that serious and almost sad
look? I go with such a glow of hope in this heart of mine, that it convinces
me Providence ordains Gaspar Ribeiro to be one of the favored instruments
in the great event we anticipate. Give me a farewel smile, my beloved liege!
or I shall fear you doubt my discretion.”
Sebastian gave the smile which his faithful servant solicited, but his
heart smiled not, for the recollection of De Castro’s death came over him,
and he shuddered to think that even of this friend also accident might
deprive him.
The departure of Gaspar was followed by preparations for that of
Sebastian: his resolution was taken; and not even the fantastic fears of Kara
Aziek (whose courage failed her when the moment drew near in which they
must wholly depend on the sincerity of Venice) could make him shrink
from the bold experiment he was about to hazard.
“Better to sink at once,” he said to himself, “than to continue thus
struggling for life, in a stormy ocean of perpetual vicissitudes: the most
precious things are not precious, unless held with a security of possession. I
will lose or I will gain all!”
This determination, as it rather endangered his own security, than
involved that of others, was equally the effect of reason as of feeling: he
was no longer able to dwell in obscurity, since half Europe knew of his
existence, and should he let this favorable crisis escape him, Spain would
have time to win away his adherents, and might finally end by extirpating
him and his race.
Again, therefore, must he repose his only child on the affection of the
Duchess Medina Sidonia. Adopted by her, and known but as the offspring
of Don Emanuel De Castro, should Providence ordain her parents to perish
or to fail, she might pursue her blameless life in retirement, striving to
forget that she had ever dreamed of power or of distinction.
Kara Aziek felt the urgency of this reasoning too strongly not to
acquiesce in its decision: the safety of Blanche was far dearer to her than
her own gratification; but the lover of her youth, the tender friend and long-
endeared companion of her maturity, had claims on her heart which not
even her child could weaken.
“I share thy fate, my Sebastian!” she said, as he spoke to her of
remaining in Sicily, “time has not changed thy Aziek’s soul: dost thou
believe her less thine, or more capable of outliving thy loss, than when she
drooped for thee to the tomb in Africa?—Ah, know her still!”
“I do, I do know thee still!” exclaimed Sebastian, with an overflowing
heart,—“and it is only my anxious care for thy safety, that makes me
apprehend any danger where I expect none for myself. We go then,
together, My Aziek! May the Almighty grant that this may be the last, the
decisive struggle!”
CHAP. IV.
Prosperous as were the views before them, Sebastian and Kara
Aziek did not leave their Blanche a second time without a trying conflict;
but they left her in the hands of another mother, and a short voyage wafted
them into scenes of most momentous interest.
Signor Morosini received them at his mansion in Venice, with a vivacity
of joy: and the Doge evinced his respect, by paying the homage of a first
visit to his illustrious supplicant.
In this interview the terms of their future alliance were specified and
fixed, and the mode of their proceedings settled. Morosini was appointed to
repair immediately to Madrid, with a formal notification to Philip III. of his
royal relation’s existence, he was to assert the identity of Don Sebastian,
and to demand the restitution of Portugal; should Philip hesitate, he was
then empowered to announce the Republic’s intention to maintain the rights
of their ancient ally. Armed with the assurance of aid from England, France,
and the Low Countries, the Venetians feared not to embark in a cause so
ably supported; a sense of recent injuries from the proud house of Austria,
contributed to inflame their zeal.
On the day of Morosini’s departure from Venice, messengers were sent
off for all the different courts in Europe, calling on them to assist in
replacing a brother-monarch. Sebastian wrote with his own hand to Queen
Elizabeth and to Essex, requiring the former to abate her hard conditions,
and to accept any other guarantee for his fidelity to the engagements she
exacted, than his only child.
While these agents were rapidly passing to and fro, the King of Portugal
remained in the house of Morosini, not yet formally declared before the
senate, (because Morosini’s presence would be necessary for his
acknowledgment,) but in private implicitly trusted, and honorably attended
by every senator.
The protestant powers had already replied favorably to the letters of
Sebastian, and dispatched their representative to the court of Madrid,
testifying their conviction of his identity, and making his restoration the
basis of a general peace: no decisive answer was yet come from that court.
Morosini wrote, that Philip, and his ministers of course, rested their
delay on the question of identity; and willing to consider Sebastian as an
impostor, were then endeavouring to find him so: he advised an instant
appeal to the Pontiff of Rome, whose investigation of the truth or falsehood
of this wonderful event would be guided by pious motives alone, therefore
to his decision the King of Spain must submit.
At this suggestion, Sebastian felt called upon to reveal his bosom
principles; after explicitly detailing them, and pledging his solemn oath
never to let them interfere with his conduct in public affairs, he declared his
resolution to live and to die a Protestant, whether as a King or as a fugitive.
He abjured the authority of Rome, protesting his willingness to meet the
scrutiny of the Pope in common with other temporal Princes, but never to
consider him as his superior in spiritual things.
Here was a stay to the forward zeal of Venice! the Doge receded with
terrified precipitancy at this unforeseen avowal, and the reply of Morosini
was full of dismay and persuasion!
Clouds began once more to gather over the fortunes of Sebastian; his
warmest Italian friends avoided his society, or employed their zeal only in
vain arguments to induce him to recant those doctrines which they deemed
abominable, and which they dared not pollute themselves by hearing!
The Pope’s legate finding exhortations and promises totally useless, at
length pronounced the sentence of reprobation in his master’s name; and
threatened the inhabitants of Venice with excommunication if they
continued to uphold him, whom he proclaimed to be a devil, or a magician,
assuming the form of the really deceased Sebastian.
Morosini returned from Madrid: his manner was changed, his zeal
extinct. Of a character eagerly open to new impressions, which by their
vivacity deceived the observer into a belief of their durability, he had been
fascinated by the insinuating graces of Philip III. and suddenly chilled by
the discovery of Don Sebastian’s altered sentiments on the most important
of subjects.
Philip had address enough to perceive the unsubstantial character he had
to deal with; he affected to lament the affronts offered to Venice, he
promised ample reparation, and by the most studied attentions to Morosini,
flattered his vanity, and lighted up a transient flame of enthusiasm in his
inflammable breast.
Morosini yet wavered between the romantic interest which a fugitive
King excited, and the vain exultation inspired by a young and prosperous
monarch’s caresses, when the Pope’s bull fell like a thunderbolt between
him and the fortunes of the former, and severed him from them for ever.
He now met Sebastian with confusion and restraint: his discourse was
full of abstruse dogmas and church threatenings; he eulogized the
unshakable, yet unpersecuting spirit with which Philip III. possessed the
faith of Rome; and he reluctantly confessed, that unless the King of
Portugal would consent to acknowledge the supremacy of the Papal See,
and to accept his crown on her conditions, the Senate of Venice could not
openly proclaim, or secretly support him.
“What then!” exclaimed Sebastian, with some of his former impetuosity,
“do you maintain the impious doctrine that man is more powerful than
God? what human hand dare bar my hand to that throne on which the divine
hand had placed me at the hour of my birth? Your birth-right is your
patrimonial house, your noble name, your rank in the republic—mine is the
throne of Portugal and the Indies; and now, by the blessing of God, I will
perish ere I renounce it. When Kings are prosperous, then do you make
them Gods; when they are in adversity, you reduce them below humanity:
what manner of justice is this? Who shall say that aught but crimes can
deprive a common individual of his lawful inheritance? and are Princes to
be more hardly dealt with than their subjects?—shame on such base
conclusions.”
“It is a crime, Sir, to abandon the only true faith, and adopt the creed of
heretics.” Morosini spoke with a ruffled though hesitating voice. “I dare not
league my soul with any Prince who professes enmity to the church of
Peter. If this were a mere political matter, we should not scrutinize the
opinions of an ally, but it is a question of conscience. Can the Catholic
republic of Venice consistently with its character, assist in taking the crown
of Portugal from the head of a pious King, to place it on that of an
apostate?”
Sebastian gave him a lightning glance of proud indignation, but quelling
the sudden emotion as it arose, he said deliberately,
“The republic of Venice knows that my sentiments are in direct
opposition to all persecution: that liberty of conscience which I claim for
myself, I am ready to grant to others. Man cannot answer for man, at the
last dread day; beware then, how you yield up your soul to the authority of
a mortal like yourself!—I disclaim all power over the spiritual part of my
subjects: they are responsible to God, not to their King, for those religious
tenets from which their good or evil actions proceed. When I return to
Portugal I return to obey and to execute the laws; to provide for the political
prosperity of my people; to endeavour at forwarding their moral
improvement by my example; and to live in amity with all nations who
acknowledge one obligation to worship one creator, and to obey the one law
of virtue that he has placed in every heart: further, than this, I exact of no
man; different portions of reason and different habits, will produce, to the
end of time, different degrees in the scale of religious advancement.
“Morosini, you now know my sentiments; which I solemnly take Heaven
to witness are faithfully delivered to you. If your republic will continue to
support a man of such sentiments in his just claim, I pledge myself for
eternal gratitude: if not, I condemn her not; I lament her slavery to that anti-
christian authority which once fettered myself, and I will depart in peace.”
“Not so, Sir!” said Morosini, changing colour, and in a hurried voice, for
shame was at his heart. “The republic is under the painful necessity of
detaining you until our most holy father the Pope has signified his pleasure
respecting her conduct.”
Sebastian was transfixed by this reply; the blood recoiled upon his heart,
and he stood some moments incapable of speech; then advancing and fixing
a stern look on Signor Giuseppe, he said,
“On the faith of the whole republic, not merely on the word of him who
proffered friendship unasked, did I come hither: eternal infamy will lighten
that republic if they suffer a hair of this head to fall. Beware how you damn
yourselves to posterity by this unheard of treachery.”
“What treachery, does Don Sebastian injuriously apprehend?” asked
Giuseppe, endeavouring to look tranquil.
“That which lays upon the surface of your own words,” was the reply
—“you return from the court of him who has fallen heir to my usurped
dominions, with a determination to make the fulfilment of your hasty
promises depend upon my renunciation of those principles, which still
believing, I dare not abjure. You cannot dispute the identity which your own
eyes and lips have acknowledged, therefore, (seduced into Philip’s interest,)
you take refuge under papal authority, and will deliver me up to
imprisonment or to death, at the ordination of Rome.”
Morosini appeared indignant at the supposition: indeed his mind was not
yet made up to any decision; and though fanaticism had taken alarm at the
obstinate heresy of his former idol, he was far from lending a willing assent
to an act of violence.
“I am cruelly situated:” he exclaimed, at length, and the facile tears
stood in his eyes—“remember, Don Sebastian, that at the period I swore to
serve you unto death, I knew not that you were otherwise than a son of the
church: since then you have undeceived me; and that difference of opinion
on matters of conscience which you have yourself established, obliges me
to stifle the pleadings of my ardent prejudice in your favor, and to place my
future conduct at the disposal of my spiritual director. In this instance I am
only the organ of the republic; it is she, who waits the result of her message
to Rome: till that arrives, your majesty must condescend still to consider
this house as your own. You command here, as the guest of Giuseppe
Morosini.”
Sebastian turned towards the Italian with a strong expression of disgust
at his now-offensive courteousness: his blood boiled: but quickly subsiding,
he repeated with a smile of contempt a short quotation from the Poet of
England.
“Note this, good Sirs!

When zeal begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforced ceremony.”
“Morosini!” he added, (and he spoke sternly, and with an air of majesty)

“I must be spared in future this mockery of respect.
“You cannot feel it, if you sincerely believe me reprobate of Heaven; and
if you do not believe me so, this abandonment of my cause either from
interest or from fear, renders you despicable in the eyes of an honest and a
brave man. Leave me, Sir! I remain then, your prisoner—but I have friends
without these walls who may with God’s blessing shake them to their
centre; yea, the foundations of your city itself.”
Sebastian turned away as he concluded, and Morosini abruptly retired.
Sebastian was still too ingenuous for the world he lived in: the moment
that roused his feelings or inflamed his passions, laid his whole heart open:
that mantle of reserve, in which long efforts had taught him to wrap
himself, was instantly discarded, and he shewed himself to his adversary,
with all his weaknesses and all his strength.
Fatal was his present sincerity: Morosini left him, mortified, humiliated,
and enraged; one hour’s discourse had made him his determined foe.
When Kara Aziek rejoined her husband, she saw in his perturbed looks
the herald of disagreeable tidings: her first thought was of Blanche, and she
pronounced her name. Sebastian quieted this natural fear, and then,
conscious that it is vain to think of concealing evils which we know must
endure for a certain period, he proceeded to tell her the nature of his
interview with Morosini.
She was prepared for disappointment, but not for an actual misfortune;
and at the intimation of their being prisoners in Venice, the blood forsook
her cheeks. Her rapid imagination instantly created a thousand frightful
images, which were indeed too likely to be realized: she sat cold and
speechless as a statue, while Sebastian, tenderly enumerating the motives to
courage under this evil, exhorted her not only to confidence in the exertions
of their friends, but to confidence in heaven.
Kara Aziek, with streaming eyes, did indeed look only to that heaven for
succour: but dark and intricate are the ways of Providence, and who dare
assure themselves that what they dread most, is not destined to form part of
those trials by which their souls are to be disciplined for a purer being? She
despaired not, but she ventured not to expect; scarcely did she hope.
Sebastian’s courage rose in proportion to the peril with which he was
threatened, and in seeking to tranquillize her he loved, he re-assured
himself.
Resolute to assert his freedom, and not tamely to bend his neck to the
yoke imposed, he addressed a short note to the Doge and Senate, requiring
their immediate answer to his question, of whether they sanctioned the
words of Signor Morosini, and demanding permission to leave their
territory, in case they declined fulfilling their former engagements.
This letter was answered by a request that he would attend the council of
senators at midnight.
At the hour appointed, Sebastian got into the gondola of the Doge, which
was sent for his conveyance: it conveyed him not to the senate-house, but to
the state-prison.
Morosini’s private resentment had cooperated with his ambition, his
interest, and his dread of excommunication: he alone of the Venetians knew
the person of Don Sebastian, and upon his professing to believe that he had
been imposed upon by the extreme likeness and great address of an
impostor, the senate took alarm, readily seized this opportunity of
abandoning a man whom the Pope anathematized, and for whose detention
Philip had recently offered them the most tempting advantages, and
precipitately determined on committing him to prison.
When Sebastian found himself thus betrayed, his fortitude transiently
forsook him, and his limbs shook under him; it seemed as if he had seen the
last of all he loved: but quickly recovering, he turned to the governor of the
place, and said calmly—
“I demand the consolation of my wife’s society. Tell your senate, that I
charge them, as they are men sensible to human affection, that they separate
us not! as they deal with me now, so will I requite them hereafter: for let
them not believe that they may corrupt the justice of Heaven.”
Signor Valdorno bowed and obeyed, and after a long absence, re-
appeared with Kara Aziek.
Left alone with her husband in an apartment, which though
commodious, was still part of a prison, Kara Aziek looked round her with
an air of distraction: her eyes were wild and tearless, her hands burning as
she clasped those of Sebastian. “Here then, we are to die!” she exclaimed,
“or here we are to live, buried from our child!”
She fell senseless on his breast as she spoke, and lost for awhile all
consciousness of their misfortune. Her recovery was followed by tears and
incessant sighs, that pierced the heart of Sebastian: he sought to comfort
her, but every delusive expression faltered on his tongue, and at length he
remained silent, hopeless of success.
The silent and deep sadness of him who was still the dearest object of
her love, made Kara Aziek sensible to the cruelty of indulging her own
sorrow: she checked her sobs, she wiped away her tears, and firmly striving
to resign herself to her fate, she rose from his supporting arms.
“We have not yet lost all!” she cried, “since we retain each other! for that
greatest of mercies, O may I be properly thankful! pardon your Aziek my
Sebastian, she is herself again.”
Sebastian embraced her without speaking, for now tenderness subdued
him, and his words were suffocated. The remainder of their night was spent
in mutual attempts at animating the courage of each other, and in secret
aspirations to the only source of real fortitude.
When the governor appeared on the morrow, to make a courteous offer
of any service he might venture to bestow, Sebastian charged him with a
second message to the senate, demanding the reason of this outrageous
treatment, and calling on them to remember the respect due to the Lord’s
anointed. He had to learn that the senate of Venice no longer acknowledged
his claim to such a title.
Morosini’s moral apostacy had given them all a plausible pretext for
violating the law of hospitality in the person of their dubious guest. If he
were indeed an impostor, no crowned head would resent their treatment of
him, no individual blame it: without having recourse to the plea of religion,
(which might embroil them with potentates professing the same faith with
their victim) they might surely detain and punish him as a deceiver.
Most of the lords believed Morosini’s assertion, (who had nearly
persuaded himself to believe it also) that an extreme likeness had misled
him, together with some circumstances which accident might have brought
to the knowledge of the pretended King, but that in their last interview,
these were rendered of no importance, since the incredible difference
between the religion of the true and the false Sebastian, was a decisive
proof of his imposture.
Many Venetians doubted this explanation; but they were spell-bound by
spiritual terrors, and were willing to let events take their course.
Both parties united in outwardly discrediting his identity, and to that
effect they answered his message.
“Since they have taken their stand on this vain ground,” cried Sebastian
to the governor, “my hour of triumph is at hand. Your senate dare not have
the boldness or injustice to deny bringing me to the proof. I demand to be
seen of the Portuguese: I am anxious to court the scrutiny of those who
have known me from infancy to manhood. There are personal marks about
most men which may certify them to others: my body is remarkable for
them: let me be seen by those now living that have served about my person!
I challenge your republic to produce me before the world. I invite the
amplest investigation: if they find me not what I maintain myself, Sebastian
the King of Portugal, let my head be smitten off—carry this message, sir, to
the Doge.”
Fluctuating, and fearful, and interested, the Doge and his counsellors
were ill-disposed to grant the fair demands of him they were betraying: the
threats of Rome, and the persuasions of Spain, could not induce them to
deliver up Sebastian to certain destruction; but they temporized and
qualified, and by detaining the object of Philip’s alarm till he should gain
time to win over Sebastian’s friends to his views, they hoped to obtain the
dazzling favors he promised, and to avert the curses denounced by the
descendant of Peter.
Morosini already reaped the fruit of his infidelity: he was caressed by the
new monarch of Spain, and gratified with the distinction of being admitted
into the order of its grandees: he was in short become the secret spy of
Philip.
No reply was vouchsafed to the frequent messages of the injured King,
and as time wore away, his amazed mind began to admit the horrid thought
that Kara Aziek’s prophecy was indeed true, and that they were doomed to
finish their days in imprisonment together.
But what were become of his friends, and of those princes who had
entered into a compact for his sake? they had not abandoned him.
No sooner did the news of this atrocious act meet the different agents of
Sebastian on their arrival at Venice, where they had hastened to see and
acknowledge him, than they importuned the senate for permission to visit
him in his prison, in order to satisfy themselves whether it was or was not
their lawful King.
The senate were deaf to their intreaties, and again De Castro, Texere, and
Don Christopher of Crato, hastened back to England, Holland, and France,
to procure the interference of these powers with the republic, for a sight of
him who proclaimed himself their sovereign.
The Duke of Medina Sidonia vehemently urged at the court of Castille,
his abhorrence of the perfidy and injustice of the Venetians, calling on his
monarch to assert the honour of Spain, by disavowing such conduct, and
proceeding to an open investigation of the stranger’s story.
The Duke of Braganza dispatched his late mother’s confessor, the Father
Sampayo, with a written deposition of the person and natural marks of Don
Sebastian, taken from the testimony of his foster-brother and his servants,
requiring the republic to compare that description with her prisoner.
These various exertions were now making in favour of him, who remote
from all intelligence, remained a prey to every species of misery. The fate
of these friends themselves, and of his innocent daughter, began to alarm
his fears, and the possibility of being torn from his wife and child, filled
him with dismay.
He was sitting one wintry night, (listening to the hollow wind that swept
in gusts over the Adriatic) now looking towards the chamber where Aziek
had sunk into a short slumber, now fixing his eyes in sad abstraction on the
ground, when the door opened, and Signor Valdorno the governor appeared,
followed by a person in the dress of a monk.
“This holy man’s importunities have made me hazard my office to give
you comfort, sir,” said Valdorno, speaking low—“your interview shall be
private—I will return in an hour.”
The governor closed the door, which he fastened on the outside again,
and then departed.
Sebastian had risen up: he looked earnestly towards the monk, who was
standing with his eyes fixed as wistfully upon him. Sebastian looked to find
the features of Gaspar beneath this disguise; but he saw only an aged and
care-worn visage, over which a few tears began slowly to trickle.
“So changed! so very much changed!” said the old man in a feeble voice
after a long silence, “yet noble and princely still! Can twenty years, then,
make such havoc in manly beauty! speak to me, Sir! let me be sure it is my
lord and master Don Sebastian; on whose head I laid these withered hands
in benediction at the house of the Duchess Braganza, on the day of his
embarkation for Africa. Speak to me, Sir—let me hear your voice!”
“Sampayo! good father Sampayo!” exclaimed Sebastian, falling on his
neck, and melting into weakness, “do you live to seek me? has your old age
been spared only to find your master thus?”
Sampayo wrung his hands in transport, “It is, it is my King!” he
exclaimed, while essaying to bend his trembling knee, Sebastian stayed him
on his arm. “Not so, good father! but our time is short; say whence you
come, and from whom! know you aught of my friend Juan De Castro—and
of him the most faithful, most dear, whom I sent to my kinsman in
Portugal?”
“I am but just come from Lisbon,” replied Sampayo, looking down and
lowering his voice; “your kinsman the Duke of Braganza has sent me, on
his representations, to ascertain your identity: denied admittance to you by
the senate, I have procured admittance through the humanity of your gaoler;
I go now, to re-urge the Duke’s request to the republic for your Majesty to
be publicly compared with a written testimonial of your person, which I
carry. Despair not, Sire! you still live in the hearts of the Portuguese, and
you have zealous friends. England, France, Holland, openly demand of
Venice, the satisfaction of bringing your truth or falsehood to the proof. I
lament the sad change in your religion; but you are my dear lord and master
still.”
The old man shed tears as he spoke, and devoutly crossing himself,
repeated an inward prayer for the soul of him he believed seduced into
error.
Sebastian’s countenance brightened: “All is not lost then!” he exclaimed,
“the path is rugged and hard to climb, Sampayo! but I shall gain the summit
at last. Yet talk to me of my friend! where is he? why stays he from me at
the time of my extremest need?”
Sampayo was silent: his care-worn countenance altered visibly, and
appalled Sebastian: the latter fixed a look on him, as if he would have dived
into his soul. “Why stays he?” he repeated hastily; still Sampayo replied
not, and the frightful silence which followed, was first broken by the King.
“In the name of God, father! answer my question.”
Sampayo looked sorrowfully up, and said in a trembling voice, “Ours is
a chequered life, dear master! grief and gladness, gain and loss are so
woven together, that—
“No preparations father!” cried the King, grasping his arm with a wild
sternness, “what have I to learn?—that some horrible misfortune has
befallen my last friend?—that I am bereft of him also?”
“Yours is the misfortune, Sire! his, the blessing:” returned Sampayo, “he
is gone to everlasting joy.”
The blow was too sudden to be borne: Sebastian uttered a dismal cry,
and fell suddenly to the ground.
At the sound of his voice, Kara Aziek awoke, and starting up, ran into
the apartment: She beheld her husband seemingly lifeless, lying at the feet
of a very aged man, whose shaking hands were feebly essaying to lift him
up. She sprang towards them, she raised Sebastian in her arms, and
slackening the collar of his doublet, sprinkled his face with water: her cares
were all employed for him, but her mind was full of alarm for her daughter,
and she incoherently questioned the stranger about her alone.
Sampayo’s answers convinced her that he knew not of whom she spoke:
and now her fears took a new direction, and she believed him a messenger
of death to her husband.
At this moment Sebastian opened his eyes; he turned them from her in
search of Sampayo, with a look of unutterable grief; then raised and fixed
them upon Heaven.
Kara Aziek’s faltering voice could with difficulty intreat an explanation
of the scene before her: Sampayo briefly repeated it. For a more vital
wound, her imagination had so far prepared her, that she received this
without that acuteness of anguish which otherwise must have assaulted her
sensibility; she merely sunk down upon a seat, pale, speechless, and awe-
struck.
Sebastian leaned against the wall of the chamber, with his head bent
down, unconsciously knocking his hand against his heart, with a violent
motion that shewed how intolerable was the pain he felt there. “Half my life
is gone!” he said, after a long and doleful silence, “he was the dearest of my
friends, for we had suffered together; he lived only in me, doubtless he died
for!”
At this thought a burst of tenderness forced the passage from his heart,
and covered his face with tears: Kara Aziek and father Sampayo wept with
him. Several times Sebastian attempted to inquire the particulars of his loss,
and as often did a passion of sorrow sweep the words away.
It was now Kara Aziek’s part to interpose herself between him and
affliction: she tenderly besought him to retire into the room she had quitted,
while she learned from father Sampayo those circumstances which he could
not hear without fresh emotion. Sebastian hastened to comply; for he was
no longer master of himself, and his grief increased rather than subsided.
While he ran to hide his lamentations in solitude, father Sampayo
proceeded to detail the mournful event of which it was his fate to be made
the messenger.
“My royal master is already informed of the noble Braganza’s
favourable reception of his confidential agent.” Convinced by the hand-
writing of Don Sebastian, and by several anecdotes of the Braganza family,
which Gaspar Ribeiro repeated, the Duke lent all his authority to the
mission of your friend, he permitted him to use his name in every attempt to
disseminate a spirit of inquiry on this important subject through our
countrymen. Gaspar had succeeded to a marvel: aided by one Lopez
Vernara (an old inn-keeper, who testified to the return of Don Sebastian,
though he knew not at the time the royal guest he was harbouring,) he drew
crowds to follow him, calling aloud for their lawful King.
About this period the Venetian proclamation of Don Sebastian’s
existence, and their remonstrance with Spain, followed by those of other
powerful states, was known in Portugal: this circumstance substantiating
Gaspar’s assertions, caused such tumults of joy amongst the people, that the
Marquis Castel Rodrigo, who now governs Portugal as viceroy, took alarm,
and commanded the noble Braganza to deliver up the man who had
originally excited this commotion.
Braganza refused: he told Castel Rodrigo, that on the truth or falsehood
of Gaspar’s report his reward or punishment might depend: he was willing
to pledge himself for the accused’s appearance, on the event of the
examination at Venice: when if the stranger there, who called himself their
royal kinsman, were shewn to be an impostor, this agent of his should be
delivered up to the will of Spain: till then, (believing his story) he should
maintain his liberty against the whole force of Spanish power.
To this brave answer the Marquis replied, by commanding the Duke to
attend him in private, with the person he protected, for the sake of hearing
his strange story. Braganza went: and leaving his armed escort in the hall of
the palace, ascended with Gaspar to the audience chamber.
“Pardon me dear Lady! let me breathe awhile! I am old and soon
overcome, and there are some events one cannot recal without sorrow.”
Father Sampayo paused to rest himself; while Kara Aziek, pale with
anxiety, and trembling with anticipated horror, waited all ear to catch his
renewed discourse. It was many minutes ere he had strength to resume.
“Time will not permit me to enter minutely into the scene which
followed: the two nobles met avowedly to examine Gaspar’s evidence
without prejudice. Castel Rodrigo had professed moderation; but in
proportion to his conviction of the truth of what he wished to disbelieve, his
anger rose: he reviled Gaspar; and finding Braganza resolute to protect his
liberty with the lives and liberties of his adherents, he lost all command of
himself, called the Duke an ambitious traitor, and aimed a blow at his
person.
“The intrepid Gaspar saved my honored master from such disgrace: he
sprung forward, and with a sudden grasp, arrested the arm of the viceroy;
but his own hour was come: Rodrigo nimbly drew forth a dagger with his
other hand, and plunged it into the heart of Gaspar. He fell, exclaiming,
“Commend me to my dear lord! I die as I have wished—in his cause.”
At this part of his narrative Sampayo stopt again; and Kara Aziek,
drowned in tears covered her face, and faintly motioned him not to
continue. Removed from the sight of Sebastian, whose grief would have
been heightened by hers, she felt privileged to give a loose to those feelings
of regret, admiration, gratitude, and affection, which the conduct and the
memory of Gaspar excited.
Her ill-suppressed sobs were not unheard by Sebastian: but he had the
resolution to remove further from the door of his apartment, sensible, that at
a moment like this, he could not bear any addition to his pains.
After a dreary interval of silence, Kara Aziek said tremulously. “Died he
indeed, happy, good father; how would this calamity be sweetened to us, if
we dare believe that Gaspar left the world with hope and comfort at his
heart.”
“The triumphant smile which sat on his pale lips,” replied Sampayo,
“assures me that he did so: that smile was still there, when his lifeless body
was conveyed to the Braganza palace, for mourning and honourable
interment.
“The brutal Marquis, satisfied with the death of his victim, opposed not
this act of my lord’s; and the lowly Gaspar Ribeiro now lies by the side of
noble dust: he sleeps in the vault of the Braganzas.”
“Ah what avails it!” exclaimed Kara Aziek, weeping afresh, “empty
tribute to the best and noblest of human beings! Honours cannot recal him
to us.”
“Yet evincing the esteem of others, they may soothe his nearer friends.”
Replied Sampayo. “I have brought with me a relic of remembrance, a lock
of his hair: my royal master may one day love to look on it.”
Kara Aziek averted her head as she stretched out her trembling hand to
receive the sad memorial: she ventured not to look at it, even while pressing
it to her lips and to her closed eyelids. Moistened by increasing tears, she
placed the relic in her breast.
A step was now heard approaching: “It is the governor,” cried Sampayo,
“farewel, dearest lady, I may not see my dear sovereign again: tell him I go
to solicit afresh—bid him be of good cheer—so monstrous an act must arm
all Europe against Spain and the Republic.” Sampayo had but just time to
salute the hem of her garment, when Signor Valdorno appeared, and led him
from the apartment.
CHAP. V.
Sebastian did not suffer Kara Aziek to remain alone: he rejoined her
with an air of desolation, which though profound, was composed. “I am
now prepared to hear all that relates to my dear friend: tell me Aziek, how
is he lost to us?”
Kara Aziek answered, with quivering lips, and the narrative she
repeated, once more subdued the fortitude of Sebastian. What love, what
grief was in his heart while he listened to the death-scene of him, whose
whole life had been devoted to his fortunes!
The visit of father Sampayo, and the event of his mission, could not
abstract his thoughts a single moment from the memory of Gaspar. But
Kara Aziek, in whom every new event excited a new apprehension, felt a
tumultuous trouble of soul, to which no reasoning could give rest.
Her daughter’s situation (of which she was ignorant) tortured her with
fear: Alas! what were the feelings of that affectionate child? and how were
they to learn whether the unexpected misfortune of her parents, had not
driven her to distraction? Since perfidy or inconstancy had shewn itself in
the character of Morosini, who should say that the Duke of Medina Sidonia
would continue his perilous protection to Blanche, and stand the scrutiny
which might follow the present inquiries of Spain?
Should Medina fail them, Blanche must fall a hopeless victim into the
hands of their enemy: and should the influence of the confederates produce
no effect on Venetian cowardice, her parents might too probably share her
wretched fate.
How sad was the prospect! treachery and alarm were succeeding to
enthusiasm and boldness: one by one, their firmest and dearest friends were
torn from them; and Kara Aziek looked at Sebastian with an expression of
piercing pain, as she thought for a moment, that ere a little while, they
might possess only each other in the world.
Times of rousing anxiety, times in which our fortunes, our comforts, nay,
our very existence, stand on the fate of a moment, are not the periods in
which the soul surrenders itself to lamentation: but frequently when
solicitude for one object is united with regret for another, we yield to a
gloomy sadness, that tinctures every thing with the same hue, and renders
the sufferer inaccessible to one cheering emotion.
Aziek and Sebastian indulged not in sorrow, though it might be said to
embue their whole being: they tacitly agreed to give their private hours to
the memory of him they lamented, and when together, to converse but on
such topics as might benefit them by consultation.
Signor Valdorno’s indulgence tempted Aziek to suggest a hope, that by
his connivance they might escape from Venice, and she eagerly gave it
utterance.
Sebastian returned a glance of surprize and concern: “What, my
beloved!” he exclaimed, “would you have me the assassin of my own
honour? To fly, would be to avow myself the impostor they would willingly
prove me: no—I am resolved to wait the scrutiny I will never cease
demanding. If they suffer me to wear out my days in this obscurity,
posterity will do me justice, and own that I must have been the true King of
Portugal: but if I basely fly, history will rank me with those miserable
madmen who usurped my name, and perished in their folly. Trust still in
Heaven, my Aziek; my soul is anchored there.”
His eyes raised and filled with virtuous confidence, infused some of their
own energy into those of Kara Aziek; she smiled through tears, and the
glow which spread over her face, assured him that their feelings were in
unison.
Meanwhile the good Sampayo hastened to renew his solicitations to the
Doge and senators: the rank and character of his master would not permit
the Venetians to hazard refusing him admittance to their council. He was
admitted, together with Juan De Castro and Father Texere, who came to
present remonstrances from England and France.
Having briefly stated their request, Sampayo concluded thus.
“My lords! I neither assert nor deny the identity of this man, who
proclaims himself Don Sebastian of Portugal; I merely come from his noble
kinsman, to ascertain his truth or to detect his falsehood. I come provided
with a minute description of the person and bodily marks of Don Sebastian;
all of which deposed to by his foster-brother and his confidential servant,
now dwelling at Lisbon: I come accompanied by divers persons, all well
acquainted with various minute circumstances, upon which they are ready
to question him publicly, so to establish or to disprove his assertions.
“Believe you not, my lords, that it is important for the Portuguese to
discover the truth of this man? think you that we are eager to place
ourselves under the dominion of a low-born impostor? think you that the
Duke of Braganza would resign his pretension to the succession, (in case of
failure in the Spanish line) to any other than to the real Don Sebastian? no,
my lords! we are actuated solely by respect for the memory of him whom
we have so long lamented. Examine this person, try him before your senate
in the face of Europe, or expect to have the whole world filled with outcries
against your perfidy and injustice. You can no otherwise efface the shame
of your present bold conduct than by proving the guilt of him you detain.
You say he is an impostor; in the name of God then, hasten to make it
appear; and tell your new friend Philip III. that even his stern predecessor
dealt not thus with the pretended Sebastians of his less settled day.”
“Your holy office protects you, father!” observed the Castillian
ambassador, as Sampayo concluded, “or this licence of speech would surely
draw down on you the resentment of the republic: let that sacred character
remind you of your duty. Is it a priest of the Romish church who thus
advocates the cause of an heretic? be he, or be he not the true Sebastian, he
is an apostate, and an alien from the protection of heaven, and we dare not
stir a step in so solemn a crisis, without the directing hand of our august
oracle the Pope.
“Beware how you draw the lightning of the consistory upon your heads
—I speak to you both, Sampayo and Texere—for both of you tread on the
precincts of spiritual rebellion.”
“Our sins be on ourselves!” said Texere, with an undaunted air, “neither
of us will shrink from an honest defence, when it is needful to make it: now,
it is for your illustrious prisoner that we speak, not for our own principles.
First admit his story to a fair hearing and investigation, after that pronounce
on his character; punish him as an impostor, or as the King of Portugal, let
our sacred superior exhort him to reconciliation with the church.
“While the Portuguese are ready to receive their King, without insisting
on his abjuration of certain private opinions, he is King of Portugal still.”
“What abominable doctrine is this!” exclaimed the ambassador, “is it a
son of the church, that dares proclaim the Vox Populi, Vox Dei? but I forget

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The Biopolitics of Gender

First published 2021

List of figures viii

Introduction: Suspending Gender and Becoming-​Gynoid

1 Woman or Womankind? Signatures, Suspension and

2 Removing/​Reprogramming the Masculine –​ The Homo

3 “You can alter our physiology, but you cannot change

4 Female Machines and Female Flesh –​Women and/​as

5 “Formally a correct response. But simulated” –​Scoring

6 Profane Simulations –​Home and Ruin in the Fallout Games

7 Becoming and Avatar –​Playing as Cyborgs among Gynoids

Conclusion: Virtual Wives and Autonomous Selves –​Towards

1.1 A visual representation of the signature 31

I would like to express my gratitude to my PhD supervisor Professor William

2 Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid

Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid 3

4 Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid

Binaries, Uncertainties, Selfhood

This creates on the theoretical level a productive synthesis of self and

Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid 5

6 Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid

Traditional humanism … is in effect part of patriarchal ideology … as

Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid 7

Biopower and Bare Life: New Conceptualisations of Gender

8 Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid

Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid 9

10 Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid

The Battle of Sexes

Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid 11

12 Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid

On Cyborgs and Gynoids

Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid 13

14 Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid

Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid 15

16 Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid

As an assemblage, a book has only itself, in connection with other

Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid 17

These narratives seemed to reinforce dominant understandings of the sub-

18 Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid

“Note this, good Sirs!

“Morosini!” he added, (and he spoke sternly, and with an air of majesty)

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“Emily Cox-Palmer-White’s original synthesis of ideas drawn from Giorgio

Emily Cox-Palmer-White is a researcher specialising in gender theory, science

Introduction: Suspending Gender and Becoming-Gynoid

2 Removing/Reprogramming the Masculine – The Homo

4 Female Machines and Female Flesh –Women and/as

5 “Formally a correct response. But simulated” –Scoring

6 Profane Simulations –Home and Ruin in the Fallout Games

7 Becoming and Avatar –Playing as Cyborgs among Gynoids

Conclusion: Virtual Wives and Autonomous Selves –Towards

1.1 A visual representation of the signature 31