Introduction: Gender Trouble in Galatealand

Abstract

This chapter sets up the book’s argument. Beginning with a commentary on the potency of the Galatea myth, even in contemporary times, the chapter moves on to describe the widespread practices of sexual representation and body transformation—from “sexting” to plastic surgeries—in relation to media images of ideally sexual bodies. In this chapter, I trace the articulation of the sexual self to media images and technologies, fantasies of perfect bodies, and body metamorphoses, noting the blurring of bodily borders and boundaries as they become enmeshed with media technologies. The book’s key research questions are defined here, along with the goal of developing an ethics of technosexuality for the changing media environment. This chapter draws on a range of theoretical approaches to these issues, from feminist science and technology studies to somatechnics to phenomenology, to explore the interrelationships of bodies, sexualities, and technologies. Arguing that mediascapes and mediaspaces form architectonic environments that impinge upon the identity positions of contemporary subjects, I note the need for “cognitive maps” to articulate an ethics of technosex.