ii. Who is a Cyborg?

G O B y c r Are you one? Am I? Are We All? What does it mean to be one? :

artist_chitra ganesh

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This image created by IndianAmerican artist Chitra Ganesh represents the blurring of boundaries between the organism and the machines.

The white feminist movement attempted to paint the woman as a

‘goddess’ by prompting a return to nature. 83 However, despite the fact that womxn, especially womxn of color have been disproportionately affected by technological development, whether we like it or not, organisms and technology are already intricately affected by one another, and as Haraway mentions “our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert.” 84 With the development of AI technology and surveillance methodologies, technologies are developed to simulate human consciousness, while human consciousness within ourselves is divided into categories. The dehumanization that is attributed to those othered identities stems from the binaries established between humans and non-humans. Evolutionary theory for the last few centuries has produced humans as “modern” organisms distinguished from the other nonhumans through knowledge, and as knowledge is monopolized by the Western world, the othered humans are dehumanized in comparison as well.

Chitra Ganesh’s art is a representation of alternative imaginations where identities are acknowledged as layered and not erased. The art shows a space-suitesqe clad figure, blowing a bubble with the image of a womxn clad in Indian clothes. The bubble seems to be an extension of the ‘self’ in the space suit. The background is a landscape that transitions from looking like cliffs to technological fragments. Birds flying through the landscape seem to blend in to the rocks/ shrapnel. This blurred representation seems to visually show the layering of identities that are embedded within all organisms. The artist also borrowed her graphic style from Indian comic books Amar Chitra

Katha which have for decades told the stories of Gods and spirits and mythical tales. The discard of the reverence attributed to these tales seems like an ode to the cyborg’s

rejection of origin stories which allows it to have, as Haraway mentions “a historically consituted body,” but at the same time be able to imagine a future where that body is not torn apart and othered. 85

This is the intent of this thesis. It is an attempt to imagine alternative futures where histories of struggle and resistance are acknowledged and on the back of those struggles, oppositional consciousness is used to imagine worlds where binaries and essentialist philosophies are torn down to create new subjectivities. These new subjectivities are cyborgs themselves, they do not focus on origin stories or instrumentalities but rather are webs of identities that exist without hierarchies.

83. Haraway, The Cyborg Manifesto, 179. 84. Ibid, 151. 85. Ibid, 155.

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“We need to start articulating our utopias, articulating what needs to be burned and what needs to be saved.” 86

Shabaka Hutchings

Sci-fi storytelling has been monopolized by white cis-hetero-male voices for decades and the technological futures potrayed in the stories affect the way collective imaginations construct the idea of a future. When the Sci-fi stories potrayed in popular media and published works cater predominantly to white cis-heteromale futures, subsequent world-making processes work to attain that goal as well. It becomes imperative then, to imagine intersectional futures, where identities are not erased, but thrive. These imaginations break down social binaries that dictate lived realities and dream of blurring.

Collage Image Credits: Chitra Ganesh, On Moonless Nights, 2017 Black Panther movie still Joshua Mays, fanart for Broken Earth series Omar Gilani, Pakistan Showcase, 2017 Wendy Red Star, Medicine Rock Child, 2011 Janelle Monáe, Dirty Computer

86. Giovanni Russonello, “Shabaka and the Ancestors Are Making Their Own Jazz History,” The New York Times (The New York Times, March 11, 2020),https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/arts/music/shabaka-and-the-ancestors.html.