Cyborgs and entanglements of technology, masculinity, and (automated) vehicles

• In this article, we will discuss different entanglements of technology and masculinity with a special focus on (automated) vehicles. Starting from a cyborg- epistemology formulated as 'thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis, prosthesis' (Gray 2001: 189), we will, in three sections, entangle and disentangle different discourses and practices around how masculinity has been constructed around intimacy, technology, and cyborgisation. Historically, this points in both destructive directions and emancipatory hopes of transcendence through cyborgisation. Cyborgs are thus political technologies, and we argue that a history of masculinity as well as the future of masculinity, in a western context and beyond, can be understood in relation to cyborgisation and intimacy with technological artefacts. It is argued that cyborgs are possibly the tricksters of the future posthuman masculinity but they are also a tool to understand the 'leitmotif' of male transcendence in the history of masculinity. To illustrate our point, we will use different forms of technologies of movement and other man-machine relations as our "objects-to-think-with", considering gendered power relations and emancipatory potentials (Haraway 2004: 321).In the first section we will discuss cyborgs and masculine entanglements in a historical perspective to suggest a cyborg-epistemology. Such approach is apt for understanding masculine desires of transcendence invested in and nurtured through automatons, golems, robots, etcetera. A characteristic feature of these ‘Man plus’ (Gray 2001) artefacts and creatures have been their prosthetic capacity with an inherent destructive/emancipatory Janus face. In the second section, we will apply the cyborg-epistemology to contemporary imaginaries and driving practices of cars. Cars and car driving is one of the arenas where masculinity is clearly constructed around intimacy, technology and cyborgisation, as exemplified in numerous cases of popular culture, and daily practices in and around cars. This section exemplifies emancipatory and destructive aspects of cars and car driving in dominant automobility systems. In the third section we will be more future oriented and speculative, looking at autonomous transport futures. While the interpellative experience of cars and its emotional and gendered dimensions have been discussed in the second section, the third section turns to the question how autonomous vehicles can be imagined and ‘felt’, and perhaps also changing gendered relations with, in and around cars (Berscheid 2016). 

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Genusstudier (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Gender Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Cyborg

cyborgisation

entanglement

Janus face

technologies of movement

masculinity

Gender Studies

Genusvetenskap

Genusvetenskap

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)