Post-Gender Posthumans in Ghost in the Shell and Serial Experiments Lain

The article examines the cyborg’s identity in the 21st century cinema. The French-Belgian film Titane (2020) by Julia Ducournau is taken for analysis as an example of the cyborg gaze. The phenomenon of “gaze” (English “aze”, French “le regard”) is used as a method. The first section of the article describes the specifics of the cyborg concept theorized in A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway, as well as in feminist and posthuman studies. A cyborg as a human/ machine hybrid is a creature that connects various oppositions: natural/ technological and male/female. Situated knowledge and affinity with others through difference are the features of the cyborg identity. The second section of the article explores the rationale for the use of the gaze theory in film studies. Adopting Jacques Lacan’s mirror stage, cinema theorists draw a connection between the gaze and the identification of spectators, film creators and characters in the film domain. In particular, Laura Mulvey theorizes that classical Hollywood cinema is shot from the male subject perspective and comes to the conclusion that female characters have passive role as objects of the male desire. The third section of the article determines the specifics of the cyborg gaze in the body horror Titane (2020). The heroine Alexia has cyborg corporeality, which is manifested in androgyny, as well as sexual and genetic connection with machine. The heroine’s finding of a family (‘kin’), her inhuman ethics and her caring practices are the characteristics that define her cyborg identity. Fear in body horror films is caused by extreme physical transformation, and in the motion picture under study fear stems from replicating the visual apparatus of the cyborg subject.

BackgroundThe rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into healthcare has transformed how health professionals learn, communicate, and make clinical decisions. However, AI-generated images and digital outputs often reproduce societal stereotypes, particularly regarding gender and race.AimThis study examined how nursing students' perceptions of gender, race, and professional roles are shaped by AI-generated images of healthcare professionals, and how these perceptions influence their communication styles and ethical awareness in interactions with AI.DesignA multimethod, cross-sectional design integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches was used. Quantitative data assessed gender attitudes in the nursing profession, while qualitative data explored visual interpretations and language patterns in AI interactions.Participant PopulationThe sample included 132 second- and fourth-year nursing students from a health sciences faculty in Türkiye.Ethical ConsiderationThe study was approved by the institutional ethics committee.FindingsResults indicated that nursing students largely relied on visual cues particularly clothing and posture when identifying professional roles in AI-generated images. Despite claiming objectivity, students frequently associated doctors with men and nurses with women, reflecting persistent gender schemas. Female participants demonstrated greater sensitivity to both gender and racial imbalances, whereas males perceived AI-generated visuals as more neutral. Language analysis revealed two main communication styles in chatbot interactions: polite and direct. Quantitative findings showed that being female, having lower income, and higher GPA were associated with more egalitarian attitudes.ConclusionNursing students' perceptions and interactions with AI are influenced by implicit gender and racial stereotypes embedded in visual and linguistic representations. Integrating AI ethics, gender equity, and digital literacy into nursing curricula will foster critical awareness, algorithmic fairness, and equitable professional identity formation among future nurses.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief analysis of two confusable philosophical positions, Transhumanism and Posthumanism, and compare their approaches in terms of their social and ecological concerns through an examination of Donna Haraway’s “cyborg identity.” Haraway introduces a ground-breaking approach in A Cyborg Manifesto and her later works, which blurs the formerly defined, distinct categories and identities that underlie the oppression of animals, humans, men, women, machines etc. By using postmodernist deconstruction, she wants to challenge Western dualisms and all kinds of oppression it causes. While Transhumanists, who inherit anthropocentrism from Humanism, support technological advancement to enhance the human condition, Posthumanists draw attention to the harms of the anthropocentric approach in terms of social and ecological justice and offer a more comprehensive and compassionate approach to other species inhabiting the planet. Since both Transhumanists and Posthumanists promote enhancement, Transhumanists need Posthumanist insights to really enhance the human condition concerning her environment.

In this paper, the human/machine binaries are redefined through the analysis of Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson through the perspective of cyborg theory proposed by Donna Haraway. The paper analyzes how the novel predicts and challenges the symbiosis of machines and humans and exposes the uncontrollable state of identity as digital convergence is becoming more ordinary. The novel presents a potential transformational space represented by the Metaverse, a digital world populated by avatars, which are the extensions of individuals, in which human beings are themselves cyborgs, who have technology to enhance their abilities and challenge the limits of social construction. These are the conditions of the modern world where physical and virtual worlds mingle in a highly complicated, overwhelming exchange of identities and the cyborg identity is beyond the capacity of agency and uniqueness. The qualitative approach to the study is utilized to meet the investigative component of the research. Haraway argues that the world is a blend of humanity and technology since it is a hideous merger of animals and machines. The paper argues that the story by Stephenson is not just a reflection of the overlap between human life and technology, but it also raises some analytical questions regarding the concept of human identity in a posthuman era. A critical analysis of Snow Crash as applied to the cyborg theory reveals that the human agency and control in a posthuman and post-identity world are rendered unfounded as the conventional ideas about the presence of human race in the society that is saturated with technology are being undermined. Simply put, the study covers issues of posthumanism and online identity, providing a structure of how the research will be conducted in the virtual worlds in the future.

New digital and biogenetic technologies-in the shape of media such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, genetic modification and technological prosthetics- signal a 'posthuman' future in which the boundaries between humanity, technology and nature have become ever more malleable. We are more aware than ever that what we call 'nature' is open to manipulation by varieties of biotechnology such as gene therapy. Computer-assisted technologies transform perceptions of body, time and space. Dreams of merging humans and machines into new intelligent cybernetic organisms leave the realm of science fiction and enter everyday reality. As the taken-for-grantedness of what it means to be human shifts and blurs, we might consider how myth, literature and popular culture have furnished the Western imagination with a gallery of fantastic and monstrous creatures on the margins of human and non-human. One contemporary example is that of the cyborg, who serves as a metaphor of the various ways in which the contemporary west is currently experiencing the hybridization of human nature. One version of the cyborg popular with cultural theorists-especially feminists- has been the vision articulated in Haraway's 'Manifesto for Cyborgs'. Termed here as Haraway's 'cyborg writing', it expresses important values about gender, politics and technology; but whilst the cyborg subverts many of the dualisms of western culture, Haraway's comment that she would 'rather be a cyborg than a goddess' inadvertently reinforces one final, often unspoken dichotomy of modernity: that between religion and the secular. Therefore the implications for feminist theory and praxis of a recovery of the goddess are explored. To concur with Haraway, such a project is prone to an inversion of traditional gender stererotypes, enclosing women in a realm of unreconstructed 'nature' at the expense of empowering them to engage with new technologies. Other models of 'becoming divine', however, promise more radical reconfigurations of the religious symbolic of western modernity, a symbolic that has sanctioned the equation of technology with the disavowal of embodied finitude in the name of a quest for transcendence. Irigaray's concept of the 'sensible transcendental' refuses the simplistic distinctions between sacred/secular, spiritual/material, divine/human. Far from representing a female version of the patriarchal sky-god, or even a bucolic, romanticized 'mothergoddess', therefore, Irigaray's model of 'becoming divine' offers an exciting addition to the critical and reconstructive resources of cyberfeminism.

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This article examines Daniel Suarez’s techno-thrillers Daemon (2006) and Freedom™ (2010) as works of speculative fiction that critically engage with themes of posthuman identity, algorithmic governance, and ecological agency. Rather than portraying artificial intelligence as a dystopian threat, the novels imagine the Daemon, which is a self-replicating system launched upon its creator’s death, as an infrastructural force that reorganizes global systems of power, labor, and survival. Through a posthumanist reading, drawing on thinkers such as Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti, and N. Katherine Hayles, this article interprets the Daemon not as malevolent code, but as an ecological actor embedded in material networks, capable of fostering adaptive forms of life and governance. By reading Suarez’s fiction through the lens of posthuman ecocriticism and infrastructural media theory, the article offers a model for understanding freedom, not as a static right, but as a relational capacity earned through participation in sympoietic systems. It argues that speculative fiction can function as a cartographic tool, mapping not only future technologies but future ontologies.

‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ is a required reading in many graduate programs to explore technofeminism, transhumanism, and studies of science and technology to explore notions of gender, race, and other minoritized identities. However, in this essay, I note the ways that Haraway’s piece still exacerbates categories of difference, and my own difficulties and critiques of the cyborg identity. I encourage readers to not only consider its importance, but also the limits of the cyborg identity, and how the concept of cyborg itself is fraught with a Western, patriarchal violence that cannot be ignored in the greater context of technology and technological innovation. Although useful in imagining a departure from traditional categories of difference, I inquire as to whether it upholds the very things it purported to dismantle, and explore other scholars’ works in challenging the concept. Ultimately, ‘cyborgs’ are not outside of the politics within which they exist, and must be interpreted in relation to other identity categories without upholding whiteness and Western epistemologies as the center.

This unique survey of the evolution of the modern Chinese national character incorporates a rich blend of history and theory as well as nation, gender, and film studies. It begins with the dawn of the concept of nation in China at the end of the Imperial period, and follows its development from early Republican China to the present People's Republic, drawing on themes of national identity, Orientalness, racial evolution and purity, cultural and gender roles, regional animosities, historical impediments, and more. The book also takes up the changing American perceptions of Chinese personality development and gender, using materials from American popular culture.

Relevance. The relevance of the study in the field of youth gender awareness in the current conditions of Kazakhstan is conditioned by the fact that providing gender education and conducting gender policy is an important tool for the development of gender equality for any state in the world.Purpose. The objectives of the study include the investigation of the institution of gender awareness and its key components in the form of characteristics and features of functioning, analysis of the features of gender identity in the structure of self-concept among young people, and the study of modern approaches of the authors to the definition of gender identity.Methodology. The main methodological approaches used in the study include the theoretical methodological approach, the functional methodological approach, logical analysis, sociological analysis, deduction, etc.Results. The study revealed that there is currently ambiguity and unformed attitudes among young people regarding their distribution in marital roles; identified factors of self-concept development that serve as components of gender identity, and developed a model of gender identity in the structure of self-concept among young people; highlighted the main gender stereotypes that influence youth and may serve as a problem in their perception of gender identity.Conclusions. The gender policy of the Republic of Kazakhstan in relation to the formation of teacher education on defining one's gender identity was analysed; appropriate recommendations for implementation in the gender policy of the Republic of Kazakhstan were developed to increase efficiency and avoid possible problems.

I consider human biases that favour anthropomorphism of robots and mis-attribution of robot capabilities, intentions and goals. I briefly look at the influence of literature and media on our understanding of robots, particularly in Western culture, and discuss how anthropomorphism and wider cultural influences lead us to moral confusion about the status of robots in particular, and artificial intelligence (AI) more generally. I review some serious concerns that have recently been raised concerning the deployment of AI and robots into human society, and the potential for disruption of family life, the psychologically targeted disruption of civic and political discourse, and even the alteration of our perceptions of gender. I also describe some of the advances that facilitate the development of modern autonomous robots. In addition I introduce the idea of robot transparency and review the arguments for its incorporation as a fundamental design criteria for robots.

Is technological progress changing our conceptual mode of thinking and learning? Of course it is, in multiple aspects of culture and society, as argued by numerous scholars who explore the terminal space between humanity and information technology. Then, are there ethnic and racial differences in "our" conceptual mode? A potential drawback in the cultural studies of the human-machine interface is the tendency to categorize humans as an entirety of humanity without deliberate examination of cultural diversities encompassing technological progress. The rhetoric of change requires the assumption of transition from an old mode to a new mode, which is in reality less the development of a whole humanity than the sense of a historical progress that classifies certain nations as advanced compared to those presumably advancing yet still behind. Japan is a unique case in this context, for the country has presented itself as a contradiction of advancement and backwardness, or exotic primitivism conjoined with high-tech supremacy. Seen from a context of Japanese culture, the idea of progress presents a rather different set of questions about cyborg identity from that of the Western philosophy forming around the academic world of the US today. How, for example, should cyborg philosophy be contextualized into Japan's adaptation of the philosophy and related literary practices, especially the genre called cyberpunk? Why did Japan become the only non-Western country that vigorously produces stories and images about cyborgs, androids, and cybernetic identities? These questions should not be simply addressed from the viewpoint of technological progress, but also from cultural contexts of identity politics in Japan. This essay will attempt to shed light on the delicate interstitial space surrounded by the four different categorical spheres, namely, Western cyborg [End Page 335] philosophy, American cyberpunk, Japanese cyberpunk, and Japanese theory of uniqueness known as nihonjinron. This sphere has a very feasible presence due to its pretentious look of "cultural influence" yet relies on cross-cultural dynamism of ideological production. The definitions of cyberpunk and cyberfeminism in this essay are thus heavily dependent on mutual interpretations of "the other culture" from multiple perspectives, which requires some generalization of these concepts. However, I consider it inevitable in order to examine the dynamically fluid and interactive nature of culture being formed by the sense of "how they see us" rather than "what is our culture," which is exactly an advantage of the discipline of comparative literature. In this paper, I will first trace a history of the philosophy of cybernetic identity, which will be referred to as cyberfeminism in this essay because of its feminist missions deployed by major figures in the field, and will then discuss how the idea of cyborg identity as developed by both cyberfeminism and American cyberpunk literature of the early-1980s impacted Japan's cultural landscape and tied into the modern practice of Japanese identity politics. With several examples from Japanese cyberpunk novels, I will argue that Japanese adaptation of cyberpunk and cyborg philosophy has not only maintained but beautifully concealed the old logic of Japanese uniqueness that sustains the illusion of Japan as a culture that simultaneously progresses and regresses through technology. The Location of Cyberfeminism The invention of cybernetics in the 1960s and the subsequent emergence of cyberpunk in the 80s have recently resurfaced as the exploding popularity of feminist discourses merged with the ever-growing cyberculture of today. This second-wave feminism that arose during the 1980s and proliferated toward the late-90s, seem to have three rhetorical strategies that are sometimes used combined, sometimes separately. One is the well-known 1985 cyborg manifesto by Donna Haraway, a counter-theory to ecofeminism in the late-70s. Her bold statement of "I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess" (181) fascinated feminists who were growing wary of the anachronistic feminist critiques of capitalism and technology. Haraway's strategy was to use the cyborg as "imagery" to inspire a new...

This review examines the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in education, particularly its impact on language learning and gender perceptions. It examines AI’s transformative potential in enhancing educational outcomes and addresses gender biases in AI interactions. Emphasizing the importance of ethical AI practices, the study highlights the need for a nuanced understanding of how gender influences interactions with AI systems in educational contexts. By exploring these dynamics, it sheds light on the complexities of technology adoption and its implications for gender equity in education.

Despite the growing body of sport studies literature engaging cyborg theory, and notwithstanding the significant amount of work within sport sociology interrogating sport and space, few scholars have attempted to situate the lived experiences of cyborg athletes both within the wide range of indoor, often more technologized settings, and outdoors in what have been considered “wilderness” environments. Furthermore, little work has examined the relationship between sport identities, sporting environments, and environmental politics. Therefore, this study qualitatively examined the lived sporting experiences of 12 competitive athletes who trained and competed both indoors and outdoors while using an array of sporting technologies. Results showed that athletes negotiated the boundaries between human, technology, and nature in complex, often contradictory ways, and made moderate connections between their cyborg identities and their impact on the environment.

The cyborg as a metaphor for cultural encodings of the interaction between humans and technology has been an accepted trope since the publication of Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto.” Alex Garland’s 2015 film Ex Machina shares many of its key themes and motifs with earlier science fiction films, from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. A first viewing of the film thus suggests an interpretation that focuses on the film’s portrayal of its female cyborgs Ava and Kyoko as another version of the “pleasure model” in the mode of Lang’s Maria or Scott’s Pris. However, it is the tension between Ava’s intelligence and visual attractiveness and her performance of a female gender identity that invites a closer investigation of the film’s visual encoding of the female cyborg. As the film shifts its focus from the young male programmer Caleb and his encounter with his employer Nathan and the cyborg Ava to Ava’s self-portrait, this chapter will take a closer look at the embodiment of cyborg identity.