The Cyborg Queen: Lip-Syncing and Posthumanism in ShayShay’s ‘Mutual Core’

Abstract

London-based drag queen ShayShay’s lip-sync performance of Björk’s ‘Mutual Core’ presents an incisive commentary on both the empowering and pernicious effects of technology on the modern-day subject. Within this performance, ShayShay explores the double-bind of materialistic discourses, namely that of the cyborg and the posthuman, through capitalising on the inherent technological mediations of lip-syncing. Through the use of both an iPhone and an iPad in performance to lip-sync in place of them, ShayShay extends the typical technological mediations of lip-syncing and highlights the ubiquity of technology in modern-day life. By first analysing this performance through both Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory and Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanism, I come to a reading of the performance that offers an empowering message, one that, through the distributed agency of the performance, rallies against hegemonic Humanist dicta. In the second instance, however, I draw on ethnographic material conducted with ShayShay to generate an analysis that exposes the deleterious effects technology, in particular its relationship to social media, has on the twenty-first-century subject. These twin analyses evidence the double-bind in which ShayShay finds themself.