Piercy’s Gendered Cyborgs: Hope, Threat, and Blurred Boundaries.

Author: 

Linda Wight

Institution: 

University of Ballarat

Journal/Publisher: 

The Wiscon Chronicles: Volume 1. Ed. L. Timmel Duchamp. Seattle: Aqueduct Press, 2007. 74-81.

Abstract: 

Marge Piercy’s Body of Glass (1991) explores how cyborg potentialities may be constrained by gender, yet simultaneously blur and transgress gender boundaries. Yod, a male “cyborg” created by a male scientist, demonstrates the gender constraints that may be imposed upon the cyborg identity, highlighting the threat of the militaristic cyborg created within a particular masculinist paradigm. Yod is unfaithful to his origins, however, successfully subverting the understanding of what it means to be a man. Although ultimately unable to escape his constructed warrior masculinity, Yod’s self-annihilation symbolises his final resistance, his assertion that a constrained masculinist cyborg subjectivity has no place in the hopeful cyborgian future.