From goddess to cyborg : considerations on the fate of beauty in posthumanism

Abstract

The concluding words of Donna J. Haraway’s essay, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, first published in 1985, read, ‘I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess’. My thesis aims to determine the extent to which that declaration implicates the question of beauty — specifically the fate of beauty in posthumanism. Building on existing work that examines Haraway’s Manifesto in relation to questions of cybernetics, the nature/culture binarism as well as gender, my thesis ponders on the possibility of assigning an identity to the goddess that Haraway chooses the cyborg over — specifically Venus, the mythological goddess of love and beauty. My thesis contains three parts, which are further divided into chapters, as well as an introduction and a conclusion. Part I tackles various definitions of both the cyborg and the goddess, alongside discourses concerning technology, ontology and materialisms, in order to investigate the possibility of a materialised goddess. In Part II, the collaborative exchange between Haraway and Lynn Randolph is examined, especially with regard to their treatment of the figure of Venus. Venus is further read as a recurring figure in the history of Western art and culture, in the context of a philosophy of aesthetics that controls and contains the female body in representation. Part III focuses on Pygmalion’s ivory girl, indicating that, as a type of unruly cybergoddess, she finds her beauty fetishised and exploited by the posthuman(ist) gaze. On this basis, my thesis finally suggests that the fate of beauty in posthumanism is one that sees the female body fragmented and, eventually, erased. The conclusion calls for a reconsideration of the origins of our histories and understanding of beauty.