From Humans To Cyborgs

Naomi Alderman's feminist SF The Power is a thought experiment on power politics.In the novel,the sudden mutation of female bodies creates a world of cyborgs.In it,the female bodies have acquired the superpower to release electrical charge,which enables them to control,hurt,and kill men by electrical shocks.People begin to empower and remold their bodies and create new goddesses and religions by means of science and technology.The power relations between women and men are completely reversed,which enables the dualistic matriarchy to substitute the former patriarchy.Based on Foucault's power theories and Donna Haraway's cyborg theories,the thesis provides an in-depth exploration of the roles of science and technology in power politics in The Power where science and technology become the defining factors in power relations.It argues that science and technology have reversed the patriarchy to matriarchy by creating subversive cyborg bodies,religions,and knowledges so that the power politics in The Power transforms into cyborg politics.The thesis also attempts to figure a way out of the arbitrary dualism in the cyborg world and realizes the significance of a new ethics commensurate with cyborg politics.The thesis is divided into six chapters.Chapter 1 includes the introduction of Naomi Alderman and The Power,the former studies on the novel,the theoretical framework as well as its originality and structure of the thesis.Chapter 2 studies the intrinsic connection between power politics and cyborg politics,and shows how power politics develops theoretically from Foucault to Haraway.It traces the understandings of power as time goes and offers a historical,systematic and comprehensive view on power politics,which provides the theoretical support to text analysis.Chapter 3,4,and 5 discuss the roles of science and technology in power politics in the novel specifically and explain how they transform and create power relations and power politics by creating new bodies,religions and knowledges.Chapter 3 explores the relations between the body and science and technology in The Power in details.It argues that science and technology are new sources of power in the creation of cyborgs.The boundaries between sex and gender,humans and nonhumans,organism and machines,material and semiotic have disappeared in the making of cyborgs.Thus,science and technology transform the power politics by creating new bodies.Chapter 4 explores science and technology's relation with religion in the power politics in this novel.It mainly argues that science and technology resist and reverse the power structure by appropriating religious figures,reinterpreting religious discourses and inserting cyborgian goddesses into the new religion.Therefore,science and technology are replacing religion by producing new faith and salvation for people in form of religion.Chapter 5 explores science and technology's relation with knowledge in The Power.It argues that science and technology control the production of knowledge and only produce the discourses conducive to the dominant matriarchy,which fails to serve for the cause of the established and absolute truth.The cyborg world is rendered into dualistic power relations again and demands the intervention of a new ethics.The cyborgian ethics works with the cyborg politics supplementarily,which is the key to break away from dualism.The last chapter is the conclusion.It first confirms the changes and development of power politics in The Power.As science and technology become new sources of power,the power politics has gradually transformed to cyborg politics.Haraway's cyborg politics is undoubtedly a hopeful possibility for the future as science and technology develop rapidly.However,it also points out that science and technology alone cannot free humans from dualism since the patriarchy is replaced by the dualistic matriarchy in the cyborg world in the novel.Cyborg politics cannot concern only for itself just as power politics cannot detach itself from ethics.Therefore,while developing power politics,people should also pay attention to the simultaneous development of ethics.The cyborgian ethics tells us that humans have always lived in a world of symbiosis where humans and nonhumans are related in the cyborgian kinship.Only when men understand the kinship in power politics correctly,can we coordinate the relationships between body,religion,knowledge and power effectively by means of science and technology,and solve the problem of binary opposition.