Doing It for Ourselves: Two Feminist Cyber-Readers

'''Hollinger, Veronica. "Doing It for Ourselves: Two Feminist Cyber-Readers."' Review of Jenny Wolmark, ed., Cybersexualities: A Reader on Feminist Theory, Cyborgs and Cyberspace'' (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1999); and Gill Kirkup, Linda Janes, Kathryn Woodward, Fiona Hovenden, eds. The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader (London and New York: Routledge, in association with The Open University, 2000). Science Fiction Studies #85 = 28.3 (November 2001): 426-35.

In general, see for Hollinger's analysis passim on the topics of the essays discussed. More specifically, the review surveys the following works.

Cybersexualities "reprints seventeen articles originally published between 1988 and 1995 and arranges them in three sections: 'Technology, Embodiment and Cyberspace,' 'Cybersubjects: Cyborgs and Cyberpunks,' and 'Cyborg Futures.' These strands are tied together through Wolmark’s detailed general introduction, as well as through her very useful introductions to the individual sections" (Hollinger p. 427).

I. "Technology, Embodiment[,] and Cyberspace": five essays and one excerpt (pp. 428-29): 1. Mary Ann Doane’s "Technophilia: Technology, Representation, and the Feminine" (1990) 2. Claudia Springer’s "The Pleasure of the Interface" (1991) 3. Zoë Sofia’s "Virtual Corporeality: A Feminist View" (1992) 4. Alluquère Rosanne Stone’s "Will the Real Body Please Stand Up? Boundary Stories about Virtual Cultures" (1991) 5. Sadie Plant’s "The Future Looms: Weaving Women and Cybernetics" (1995) 6 Excerpt from Elizabeth Grosz’s Space, Time and Perversion (1991)

II. "Cybersubjects: Cyborgs and Cyberpunks" ("of particular interest to students of science fiction, addressing as they do representations of embodiment and gender difference in sf literature and film" (pp. 429-30). 7. Anne Balsamo’s "Reading Cyborgs Writing Feminism" (1988) 8. Katherine Hayles’s "The Life Cycle of Cyborgs: Writing the Posthuman" (1993) 9. Veronica Hollinger's "Cybernetic Deconstructions: Cyberpunk and Postmodernism" (1990) 10. Nicola Nixon's "Cyberpunk: Preparing the Ground for Revolution or Keeping the Boys Satisfied?" (1992) 11. Thomas Foster’s "Meat Puppets or Robopaths? Cyberpunk and the Question of Embodiment" (1993) 12. Jenny Wolmark’s "The Postmodern Romances of Feminist Science Fiction" (1995)

III. "Cyborg Futures" 13. Chela Sandoval’s "New Sciences: Cyborg Feminism and the Methodology of the Oppressed" (1995) 14. Jennifer González’s "Envisioning Cyborg Bodies: Notes From Current Research" (1995) 15. Kathleen Woodward’s "From Virtual Cyborgs to Biological Time Bombs: Technocriticism and the Material Body" (1994) 16. Donald Morton’s "Birth of the Cyberqueer" (1995) 17. Donna Haraway’s "The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others" (1992)

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=============== "[...] The Gendered Cyborg is primarily designed to be used as a reader. It contains a series of set readings (nineteen selections originally published between 1980 and 1998) for a sixteen-week course, "Gender, Technology and Representation: Women, Machines and Cyborgs," [...] (Hollinger 431).

I. "Representing Gender in Technoscience" II. "Alien M/others: Representing the Feminine in Science Fiction Film" includes Mary Ann Doane’s "Technophilia: Technology, Representation, and the Feminine" and Anne Balsamo’s "Reading Cyborgs Writing Feminism."(as does Cybersexualities) Barbara Creed’s "Alien and the Monstrous-Feminine" (on the ALIEN films). III. "Representing Reproduction: Reproducing Representation"

IV. "Refractions (Women, Technology and Cyborgs)" includes Sadie Plant’s "On the Matrix: Cyberfeminist Simulations" (1996)

Cybersexualities also reviewed Christine Wertheim and Margaret Wertheim, Signs 28.3, Gender and Science: New Issues (Spring 2003): 975-978.

RDE, completing, 9June19