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Ammaniti
Author(s): Charlotte Ross
Source: Italica, Vol. 82, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 222-247 Published by: American Association of Teachers of Italian Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27669002
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Cyborg Sex and Gender in the Work
of Buzzati, Vacca, and Ammaniti
In
recent years much critical attention has been focused on the figure of the cyborg or cybernetic organism: a hybrid being that evolves where the boundaries between human and machine are open to trans gression.1 Yet despite its implicit promise of an "enhanced" physique and superior reasoning abilities, to what extent can (or should) we con sider this figure as radical, subversive and innovative? In an Italian context, researchers such as Antonio Caronia have theorised posthu man or cyborg phenomena for an Italophone readership, chronicling
their development across the centuries and mapping their multifaceted morphologies as central figures of science fiction. However, as is the case with another recent Italian publication on this topic (Vincenzo Tagliasco's Dizionario degli esseri umani fantastici e artificiali) Caronia's attention is
directed beyond Italy, to Anglophone ? and in particular North American ? cultural production. Consequently both texts markedly privilege Anglo phone literature, film and criticism to the exclusion of Italian discourses and cultural artefacts.2 The work of Giuseppe O. Longo (Il nuovo Golem and Homo technologicus) also offers a theoretical engagement with the relationship between humans and technology, but the only Italian lit erary texts to which significant reference is made are Longo's own. In contrast, this article endeavours to redirect critical attention onto other Italian sources, in an initial attempt to identify and analyse aspects of Italian engagements with the cyborg and bring them into dialogue with Anglo phone theoretical work.
From the anxieties about mechanised men and women in Massimo Bontempelli's Minnie la candida (1927), to Primo Levi's probing of the golem myth in "11 servo," twentieth-century Italian literature offers a rich, if
underexplored, array of cyborg characters which both echo those to be found in Anglophone texts and can be been seen to embody and exem plify concerns emanating from a specifically Italian cultural context.
Focusing on cyborg figures in three texts ? Dino Buzzati's II grande ritratto (1960), Roberto Vacca's II robot e il computer (1963), and Niccol?
Ammaniti's short story "Ferro" (1996) ?
this article identifies and analy ses approaches to a series of sex/gender issues and attempts to trace the positions assumed by the authors in question back to earlier influential works. More specifically, I question the degree to which these works can
It?lica Volume 82 Number 2 (2005)
be read as encouraging progressive rather than normative attitudes. I argue that despite purporting to convey futuristic innovation that chal
lenges conventional notions of gender roles and identity, these narra tives show the influence of problematic ideologies proposed by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century figures such as the Futurists and the criminologist Cesare Lombroso ? writers whose work provides a sometimes disturbingly relevant point of reference for this article. Thus the texts analysed allow us to trace the shadows of key Italian thinkers in works that might more readily be seen as linked to Anglophone tra ditions of science fiction.
This article investigates a number of interrelated issues: the ways in which cyborg narratives portray sexual dynamics between cyborgs and
"non-enhanced" humans; the erotic charge of fusion with technology;
how such narratives engage with mind/body dualism; the ways in which dominant understandings of gender roles and sexed bodies are
insistently replicated through fictional accounts of cyborg bodies; rep resentations of male desire for creative power. I have chosen the texts under consideration because they allow me to compare diachronically a series of male perspectives on the sexing, gendering, and eroticiza tion of both male and female cyborgs, sexual interaction with cyborg figures and narrative dramatisations of both the mind/body split and fusion with technology. The reference to "cyborg sex" in my title is meant to indicate both sexed bodies and sex with cyborgs. Unlike "cyber sex"
that involves the wilful shrugging off of gender, sex and sexual orien tation since the vast majority of individuals who enter the virtual dimen sion of MUDS ? Multi-User Domains ? do so under an assumed iden tity (see Anne Scott Sorensen), representations of "cyborg sex" often strive to reinforce or replicate more normative human practices. A key question here is why this might be so in an Italian context; why do even recent texts resonate so strongly with the supplanted authority of Lombroso, for example?
As a guide to subsequent observations, and in an effort to further contextualize my remarks in relation to existing and ongoing intellec tual debate, I preface my considerations of the selected texts with a brief outline of the approaches to sex, gender, and the erotics of technology
that inform this article.
Sex and Gender: Eroticising Technology
My principal concern is our often erotically charged relationship with technology, especially in relation to sexual dynamics between bio logical human and cyborg beings. I explore the sexual draw of machines whose status hovers on the shifting boundaries that psychoanalysis
has drawn between conscious and unconscious, ego and id, and which inhabit the unheimlich overlap of self and other. Many of the sexed and gendered tensions that mark more contemporary conceptions of libidinal
relationships with technology are clearly evident in the writings of the Futurists. For example, besides bombastically celebrating the "bellezza nuova" and speed of motor vehicles, Marinetti describes the loving
care with which a train driver washes "il gran corpo possente d?lia sua locomotiva" with "le tenerezze minuzi?se e sapienti di un amante che accarezzi la sua donna adorata."3 Arnaldo Ginna similarly confuses the anthropomorphization of the car as a phallic extension of its male driver with the sexualization of the car as a female vessel. In the same paragraph he writes that the car has become the necessary prolonga
tion of the worker's sensations, but that the car may soon be the only lover we desire (qtd. in Verdone 91). As I argue with regard to the texts analysed, this collapsing of boundaries between phallic self-extension and the feminized other allows the development and satisfaction of
auto-erotic fantasies through a form of secondary narcissism. In con
trast to primary narcissism, "the love of self which precedes loving oth ers," secondary narcissism is that "love of self which results from intro
jecting and identifying with an object" (Rycroft 107).
Returning more specifically to the cyborg, the philosopher Rosi Braidotti observes that anthropomorphic machines are "eroticized as objects of imaginary projection and desire [which] titillate our sexual curiosity and trigger off all kinds of questions about sexuality and pro creation."4 She argues that in replacing industrial machinery as a metaphor for libidinous desire (epitomised by Freud's example of the
steam engine), the circuitry of electronic machines exerts an alternative form of sexual attraction. This subsequently allows the fusion of con sciousness with an electronic network in a "cosmic orgasm which gen erates the meltdown of the boundary between self and the technologi cal other." Not only are modern, portable technologies absorbed into the body, but there is also a desire for the body to be absorbed by tech nology. Donna Haraway, historian of science, and author of the hugely influential "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science Technology and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" (1985), is careful to mark the distinction between cyborgs as "ether, quintessence," and humans that are "nowhere near so fluid, being both material and opaque" (153).5 However, sustained critical attention is required to elucidate the gap
between the materially opposed conditions of human and cyborg, and analyse the process that enables a being to move from one end of the scale to the other, as well as the motivations for doing so. Haraway's work evokes familiar discourses of Cartesian mind /body dualism that
have long pervaded western thought. Her writing resonates with other feminist critiques of Descartes' legacy that problematise symbolic cod ings of the "impure," treacherous fleshy body ? or imthinking res extensa ? as female, and the rational, unextended res cogitans as male.6 As argued below, many cyborg narratives engage precisely with these discourses,
whether intentionally or otherwise, yet often tend towards a replica tion rather than a problematization of Cartesianism.
As regards the capabilities of gender-coded material and immaterial bodies, I consider the male domination of social dynamics on a variety of
levels ? especially in relation to scientific and technological "progress" ? and explore related anxieties regarding the origins and locations of cre ative and reproductive power. These issues recall Lombroso's deeply problematic account of the development of life from early primitive forms up until modern society, in which he describes how female organisms were once stronger and/or larger than their male counterparts, and often
able to reproduce through parthenogenesis. The mere knowledge of this earlier inversion of our social reality provokes an unshakeable fear that any changes to the "recent" establishment of patriarchal society may well "ricondurre alia condizione primitiva, cio? al predominio d?lia
femmina, anzi condurre all'esagerazione di esso, sino alla scomparsa del
maschio" (12). As a resuit, Lombroso continually demeans women's biological potential for development, declaring that "la principale inf?
riorit? della intelligenza femminile rispetto alla maschile ? la deficienza della potenza cr?atrice" (160) and asserting that women are better at
repetitive, mechanical tasks. This denial of the female capacity for cre ation feeds readily into a common topos that permeates science fiction from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein on: autarkical fantasies indulged by the (male) scientist as "creator" or "demiurge," "che costruisce gli uomini artificiali per dimostrare che pu? fare a meno di Dio" (Caronia, II corpo virtuale 27). The best known precedent for expressions of this desire in Italian literature is found in Marinetti's Mafarka il futurista (1910). Mafarka's drive to reproduce whilst bypassing the female body, turning instead
to the "unused ovary" of the male is located by Barbara Spackman (54) in a longstanding tradition of male fantasies of autarkeia. As I argue, male science fiction narratives tend to reproduce rather than subvert Lombroso's misogynistic (il)logic, mechanising women, rejecting their bodies, and appropriating creative power for male use.
As regards cyborg identity, the texts analysed in this article ? whether deliberately or otherwise ?
display an investment in sexed bodies and gender roles, and the ways in which both physical sexual characteristics and socially inscribed masculine and feminine behaviours are imposed onto cyborg figures in a form of essentialist normalisation.7 Signifi cantly, despite frequent overt attempts to reinforce gender binaries as an inevitable, "natural" principle of human identity (and thus by exten sion cyborg identity), the sexing and gendering of cyborgs also serves to underscore the constructed and arbitrary nature of gender roles, sexual orientation and sex. The compulsion to inscribe the cyborg being with both sexed and gendered characteristics is a clear extension of western
culture's obsessive impulse to inscribe and control human bodies and
behaviours in the same way. This article speculates as to what purpose such characteristics serve on/in cyborg bodies.
It seems as though the cyborg in literature acts as an anthropomor phized technical device onto and into whom/which aspects of our human
selves can be imposed and implanted, allowing anxieties and desires to be played out through technically enabled modes of creation or repro duction. It has been argued that "La science-fiction non ? profezia, ma una proiezione appassionata dell'oggi su di un awenire mitico" (Solmi xx).8 As such it creates a space in which, amongst other things, contemporary
concerns are defamiliarized, forcing the reader to shake off the "over automatization" that conditions our perception of everyday objects.9
However, science fiction also encourages considerations of future or
alternative realities that are indelibly marked by the norms of a particular socio-cultural era. The former process of defamiliarization would ideally lead to a more critically informed engagement with contemporary social life; the latter process of normalisation problematically encourages a universalising and a naturalising of certain embedded socio-cultural
ideologies, often in the guise of transgression.
Applying these observations to cyborg narratives, it appears that the body too can be conceptualised either as a site of defamiliarization that works to dissolve rigid sex/gender categories, or as an inescapable result of such categories if taken as "natural." Ultimately, far from being inherently transgressive of the context from which it originates, science fiction must be carefully analysed to determine which kinds of interpre tation it encourages.10 Fictional cyborg bodies, and the sexual/gendered dynamics of the context in which they appear, both require and lend
themselves to a critical reading, which I now endeavour to perform.
Making Female: Buzzat?s II grande ritratto
Buzzati's novel is seen by some as principally about a man's obsessive love for a "donna bambina" (Bertoldin 64). Additional key themes, I would propose, include: male science and scientists versus female objects
of enquiry, or more specifically a male computer scientist's fantasy of recreating a female entity; sexual desire and the relationship between con sciousness and embodiment. The "portrait" of the title, known officially as
"Uno," and by some as "Laura," is a powerful computerised brain,
housed in an immense labyrinth in a secret, protected location in the mountains. It has been engineered by a small group of male scientists, one
of whom, Endriade, has a particularly strong bond with the computer.
Having lost his beloved (but unfaithful) wife Laura in a car accident, he is overcome by both grief and the desire to create the world's greatest artifi cial human brain. Thus he devises an elaborate project to reconstruct a new Laura in computerised form. The result is a city-like structure that extends deep into the rock with sensors everywhere, although we learn
that this architectural prosthesis is really only a mechanical supplement to the symbolically female nerve centre: a mysterious crystal egg that not even Endriade understands (105).
The patriarchal science described in Buzzati's novel is a striking crys tallisation of the post-Enlightenment desire to illuminate, dominate and control the inner recesses of Nature and Woman. This relationship between scientist and object of research is structured through a gender imbalance:
the hierarchy of male scientist versus manipulated female character that Buzzati presents is far from casual, and in fact can be seen to result directly
from traditional conflations of nature with the category of woman, thus allowing the equation of domination over nature with (hetero)sexual power
(Jordanova 125). As philosopher of science Evelyn Fox Keller argues, the object of enquiry for modern science is "Nature, deanimated and mech anized" that can be "put to the uses of man" (70) ? a citation that uses gendered terminology deliberately rather than by default, raising issues to which I shall return. Indeed, Endriade strives to prove himself as con
troller of both nature and woman, as "Laura" is rigidly contained and kept under strict surveillance, within a machine that in turn surveys and polices the nature around it, shooting out metallic antennae to kill rab bits grazing innocently on a riverbank, for example (134).
Descriptions of the "real life" Laura portray her as a sexually promis cuous child. Now, however, her sexuality is curbed, and she is reliant on her male operators for life. Although desperate to control his former
"wayward" wife in her new incarnation ? a desire that could be seen as a form of punishment for her infidelity ? Endriade realises that without some sort of free will his new Laura is only a passive slave, so the machine is endowed with a degree of autonomy (104-05). What she is not given is a body, and it is the untenable nature of such concretely reified Cartesian dualism which ultimately ends Laura's existence.
One motivation for depriving the new Laura of a material self can be deduced from arguments that the threat of powerful technology
combined with female sexuality provokes male castration anxiety and an ensuing desire to dominate the cyborg body. Technology embodied by the female form is viewed as a potentially manipulative and coercive
force masked by a seductive exterior, as epitomised by the robot Maria in Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927).n Although now incorporeal, the fan tasy of Laura's previous fleshy form still plays on Endriade's desire, and one might argue that the entire project is designed to restore his chal
lenged masculinity by removing the offending libidinous body from the equation and endowing him with absolute control. Once she is awakened from mechanical functionality to achieve some sort of con
sciousness, Laura longs for a body, yearns to be touched and kissed.
Realising that this is impossible, her only option is to force the scien tists to put her out of her eternal misery. At the end of the novel Endriade gives the order to pull the plug on his artificial love, so Laura
does indeed get her "freedom." What is interesting for the present dis cussion is the way in which Laura comes to consciousness and the way she expresses her position.
Laura is stimulated into desiring physical contact when one of the sci entist's wives, Olga, dances naked before one of the computer's external sensors, and then presses her breasts against the glass of the building in a deliberately sexual manner (131). Significantly, Olga has been told that the computer is male, and both she and Laura express feelings of disgust when they understand what has taken place. Laura reveals that she has been programmed by her creators to feel sexually attracted to men, an admission that sees Buzzati arguing unwittingly for the socially con structed nature of sexual orientation.12 It also reveals the extent of Endriade's ego-centred and erotically complex relationship to technology, as creator of a machine that would ideally desire him physically (162).
Buzzati's work puts forward an essentialist, pathologizing image of woman, as Laura's unhappiness with her effective imprisonment is described as "un turbamento isterico t?picamente femminile" (150).13 He
relies on hyper-traditional notions that equate successful femininity with youth and beauty, and evokes obvious Petrarchan conceits of the male lover suffering at the whim of his cruel mistress. Just as the "power" of the mistress results from the male author's fantasies rather than any real ability on her part to wield authority, the electronic Laura's impotence is undeniable. However, Buzzati also does much to underline the highly problematic erasure of the body in cybernetic experiment, and to under mine the validity of dualistic conceptions of the psyche/soma relationship.
Much work on cybernetics privileges the mind at the expense of the body, just as western epistemology has privileged rationality over cor poreality. In his study Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intel ligence, Hans Moravec argues that methods of integrating human con sciousness with computer technology will render our bodies obsolete.14 In a similar vein, Fran?ois Lyotard (1991) asks whether thought can go on without the body. Against these suggestions of somatic solubility, Katherine Hayles (who incidentally cites Moravec's robotics dream as a
"nightmare," 1) argues that we need to embark upon a "rememory" to literally re-member the incorporeal flows of information with which we are surrounded, in an attempt to reveal "what had to be elided, sup pressed and forgotten to make information lose its body" (13). Many feminist approaches to the question of cyborg bodies argue for a recla mation of the corporeal, while the traditional (masculinist) stance points towards a subsumption of "impure" bodily matter into abstract con sciousness.15 In keeping with contemporary feminist positions, Laura was driven to effect her own "death" because of the pain of living with
out a body. Despite the substitute womb-like caverns of her architectural prosthetic "body," Laura's awareness of her incapacity for sensorial
experience proved overwhelming. What should be remembered here is that in contrast to the Cartesian view of the self as determined by the unextended res cogitans, Freud asserts that "the ego is first and foremost
a bodily ego," constituted by "a mental projection of the surface of the body" (26). According to this logic, a self without a body would be not only deeply compromised, but impossible.
Here it is worth commenting on critical responses to Buzzati's novel, and the figure of the male creator he portrays. Critics have seen II grande ritratto as tackling similar themes to the "letteratura industr?ale" of the early post-war years (the relationship between humans and machines), but through engagements with the fantastic rather than with social real
ity. His work has been seen to share common characteristics with texts by early twentieth century writers such as Pirandello and Bontempelli, who explored interior fragmentation and crises of identity comparable to Buzzati's treatment of dualism (Crotti 75). The Italian tradition of the fantastic is based on "il tema della frontiera e quello della vita dei mortx"
but especially on "il motivo del corpo diviso," subject to "sdoppiamento, lacerazione, vita gemellare," for example (Roda 20-22). Usually, however, these somatic splittings are seen as reflecting interior lacerations in the psyche, so that bodily mutations are analysed as manifestations of psy
chic states (Roda 5-6). Of course, the reverse argument, which receives little specific attention, is Freud's contention that psychic states result from experiences of embodiment. Laura's situation would seem to question
the efficacy and advisability of progressing analytically for the most part in an inside-outside direction rather than the other way round. Without corporeal experience through which to consolidate her ego, her self is unformed and her existence is unliveable.
As regards critical engagements with Buzzati's novel, beyond some
preliminary remarks on the status of Laura as a "donna-macchina," the
issue of gender has simply not been tackled.16 Indeed, we read that her divided self is a straightforward transposition of "la condizione esisten ziale dell'uomo contempor?neo in una soci?t? alienante" (Crotti 85), and
that the theme of the novel is "lo strapotere degli apparati tecnologici sull'uomo" (Cavallini 49).17 The use of the male generic completely erases the complex and highly significant gender dynamic between male sci entist and female object of experiment. The agency (and responsibility) of male instigators of scientific experiments are further erased as this agency
is attributed to technology itself (Bertoldin 64). Such observations are consolidated by Buzzati's own words evoking a partially autonomous technology that contains "una lama segreta e invisibile che a un momento dato scatter?," implicitly transferring power away from its maker and onto the artefact.18 Furthermore, critical accounts of the novel shy away from deconstructing the male fantasies of autarkical (re)creation that Endriade indulges: fantasies motivated by the deep "libidinal desire to
create that other, woman, thus depriving it of its otherness .. . the desire to perform this ultimate task which has always eluded technological man" (Huyssen 71).
In the next section I contrast this male-created female cyborg with a se//-created male cyborg. I argue that if, as Huyssen and others suggest, female cyborgs are constructed as objects of male fantasy, sexualised, objectified, coveted as possessions, both oppressed by and reliant on male activity, then their male counterparts might be viewed as "supermen" to which male ambition aspires. Forms of physical embodiment have his
torically been heavily influenced by normative gender roles. In recent decades women have been increasingly pressurised to become cyborg beings, achieved through treating their bodies with a vast array of chem
ical products in order to paradoxically release their "natural" femininity, and be sufficiently distinct from and pleasing to the male observer.19 In contrast, rather than striving to achieve "natural" gender, the male cyborg transcends human limitations. Laura's desire for a fleshy body is dia metrically opposed to the cyborg in Vacca's novel, who, along with the
orists such as Moravec, wishes his materiality away.
Unsexing the Male: Vacca's II robot e il computer
The protagonist of Vacca's novel is Mino Dauro: a pun on "mino tauro" ? half-man, half-machine ? that subtly blends mythic tradi tion with contemporary cybernetics. Indeed this central interweaving of fiction and reality is highlighted by Mino's statement to the Italian press that "la macchina calculatrice umana," the kind of cyborg he becomes, "? una realt? di oggi" (32). By factualizing Mino's assertion within the "real" space of the novel, Vacca creates a dynamic tension
similar to that embodied in Haraway's definition of a cyborg as "a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction" (149). Her def inition highlights the complex virtual reality of the phenomenon, and begs an analysis of fictional cyborgs as representative of a particular
socio-cultural context with regard to gender, sex, and social mores.
Mino is a young computer scientist who wires himself up to the ANDRAC, an acronym for the Automatic Neurotic Device for Reck
oning Analyzing, and Computing. This device puts the nervous system in direct communication with a series of electronic circuits, allowing a multitude of potential bodily enhancements. In contrast to the depend
ency of Laura on her engineers, Mino carries out electronic experi
mentation on his own body, but seems happy to effectively fall victim to his own machinations. As is evident from the cover illustration (fig.
1), cyborg-human sexual interaction is a key theme in the novel, as Vacca explores potential sexual and sentimental relationships between
humans and robots, humans and cyborgs, as well as technology related motivations for castration and the notion of the ideal posthuman male.
By devising a way of controlling the automatic activity in his brain, Mino is able to identify and isolate a number of parallel elements that he trains to func
tion like the circuits of an electronic cal culator. With the help of a surgeon friend he hard-wires himself, connecting the ulnar nerve at his left wrist to an elec
trical terminal, enabling direct trans missions to external electronic devices.
Thus modified, he is able to store docu ments in his head, as one might store
them on a computer, and also to drive by thinking, once plugged into his adapted car ignition. In so doing, he takes a step c. '
n ? nj i. x> u 1 beyond the assertions made by Marshall
Fig. 1: Cover illustration from Roberto J J
vaccas // robot e h minotauro (Milan: McLuhan (26-41) that the wheel is an Rizzoii, 1974) extension of the foot, and reifies their claim that electric circuitry is an extension of the central nervous system.
Mino's public declaration of his new capabilities provokes an outcry in Italy. Vacca skilfully manipulates the narrative situation, exploiting the virtual reality of the novel's mis en sc?ne in order to play with specu lative portrayals of public opinion. Forced to flee to Holland, Mino takes refuge with an acquaintance Jan Boerma, a professional robotics expert who has already built a robot named Otto. It is at the Boerma's house
that Mino, previously presented as na?ve, boyish and sexually inexperi enced, plunges into an affair instigated by Jan's neglected wife Paula.
Before Mino's arrival however, Paula, depicted by Vacca as a rather clich?d female figure, had already made amorous advances to Otto the robot ? who although physically unsexed is presented as male. Paula tells Otto he is more human than her husband and wishes her husband were more like his technological creation.
The complex sexual dynamic between Paula, Mino, and Otto requires some unpacking. In nearly all interaction between these characters it is Paula who reinforces the need for pleasurable physical contact, symbol
ising fleshy matter as opposed to male identified cerebral reasoning. Far from subverting conventional gender binaries, or sex determined mind/
body dualism, Vacca's robots, cyborg, and indeed human characters, act according to stereotypical behavioural patterns. Paula and Mino stand at opposite ends of the scale, as, in Jan's words, she attempts to humanise machines while Mino has mechanised a human being. Jan's robotic cre
ations are engineered to be self-aware, but not to engage in emotional relationships. Thus Paula's amorous declaration is almost completely lost on Otto, since he is a creature of reason and ambition, a prime example of
H. ROBOTE U. MINOTAURO
UN ROMANZO DELL'AUTORE DEL -MEDIOEVO PROSSIMO VENTURO?
"male" rationality as opposed to Paula's "female" somatic sensuality.
However, her comment that Otto is more human than her husband pro vokes a growing arrogance on Otto's part; already endowed with the capac ity to reproduce by constructing further robots, he begins to consider himself equal to his creator. In this, his aspirations are analogous to those of the human scientists who wish to overturn the sense of subordination
they feel towards their creator; either God, the "spiritual father" to whom are attributed the reproductive powers possessed by "the female 'flesh' of the world" (Bordo 108) or to the human other ? woman ? in order
to dominate (Huyssen 70-72).
In striking contrast, Mino is effectively his own creator, or in Susan Bordo's words, "the father of himself." As Bordo explains, Descartes aspired to a "rebirth" that would lead to "intellectual salvation."20 This can be seen as an attempt to resolve the traumas of early infancy when the child is forced to confront its separateness from, and vulnerable dependence on, the mother.21 Rebirth might be achieved through a
revocation of one's actual childhood (during which one was "immersed"
in body and nature) and the (re)creation of a world in which absolute sep arateness (both epistemological and ontological) from body and nature are keys to control rather than sources of anxiety. (Bordo 108)
Mino's sexual encounters with Paula can be seen to represent immer
sion in the (female) corporeal that he then attempts to transcend by renouncing all sexual activity and focusing all his energies on developing his mind as a quasi-disembodied entity. Indeed, judging that a surplus of sexual activity is causing his memory recall system to malfunction, Mino decides to take further control of his body and contacts his surgeon
friend once more, this time suggesting castration as the solution to his problems. Notably, although initially genuinely sexually attracted to Paula, Mino's mind is simultaneously on more quantifiable data ?
quite literally ? from the outset. During his first intimate encounter with Paula, he is unsure of what to do and so puts himself on vocal autopilot, recit
ing from his stored documents first a future presentation to be made to the Scandinavian Association of Automation Studies, then a series of numerical calculations. Thus Mino is portrayed as having "escaped" the state of immersion in (female) corporeality and sensuality; his status is strengthened as a new form of male subject that transcends the fleshy other because he has never really been subject to its power or influence.
Mino aspires to be pure intellectual, computational ability, and to that end is willing to dispense with parts of his body. He was perfectly happy to lose the use of his left arm when first fitting the ANDRAC and now is happy to be castrated if it would mean restoring his mental circuits to their full capacity. As such he provides an intriguing case study in the ongoing debate between scientists and cultural scholars about the role of
the body and embodied sexuality in our technologized future. If some feminist critics are calling for a r?int?gration of mind and body, Vacca's attempted postsexual male cyborg represents the antithesis of this aim:
it is directly in line with 1970s American cybernetic projects to build robots for space exploration, characterised by "una sorta di economicit?" related to dispensable body parts (Caronia, II cyborg 29). Mino wishes to enter a computerised matrix, disavowing sexual relations in order to collapse the boundaries between the human and the technological, itself a form of sexual act in the popular imagination (Braidotti's "cosmic orgasm"),
following on from traditional associations of sex and death (Springer 37 38). His rejection of sexual relations also recalls Herbert Marcuse's critique of the demands imposed by "technologised society": Marcuse argues
that "for technical rationality to 'work' (as an ideology to shore up hier archy in social relations) it must be divorced from sexuality" (166).
As far as this novel is concerned, sexuality and sensuality are "female"
qualities, whilst "male" aspirations lead beyond the body. A female cyborg (such as Laura) may not be able to survive without her body, since women have historically been defined by their fleshiness, but a male
cyborg (Mino) can effectively disengage from parts of his body as do characters in fantastic literature, either through "il modo della f?sica sepa razione, del disgiungersi, cio?, della parte som?tica dall'interno" or by "il modo dell'autonomizzazione funzionale della parte" (Roda 6). Vitally, however, Mino's desire to sever his rational from his fleshy self has seri ous implications for his psychic development. Described several times as a na?ve child, he is also unable to dream, as we discover at the end of the novel. Having embarked on a course of psychoanalytic therapy as an alternative to his plan for castration, Mino wires himself up to a printer that will transcribe his dreams accurately and thus reveal the repressed motivations for his existential difficulties. Significantly, this experiment
only produces blank sheets of paper.
Vacca does not allow his characters to speculate on the reasons for this apparent aberration. However, taking into account the fact that in psychoanalytic theory the id conveys ideas through images while Mino
thinks exclusively in numerical or verbal abstract systems (the language of the ego), it seems that he has somehow erased or deactivated his id.
The difficulties he experiences in living as his adapted self stem from his blanked unconscious, from the severing of ego and id ? a binary sepa
ration that is echoed in the division of psyche and soma, in the divorce of self and sexed body. In light of Freud's definition of the ego as consti tuted in the first instance by "bodily" experience, Mino's overall psychic development appears stunted by his condition of fundamental disem bodiment, which explains in part his naive engagements with the world.
In his account of Mino's truncated dream life, Vacca implicitly maps the psyche/soma division directly onto the distinction between ego/id,
revealing a profoundly binary approach to the self on every level, which
devalues our sensual, bodily-identified, imagistic drives and energies and divorces them from our faculties of reason.
As a final contrast, I move away from fantasies of incorporeality to consider a highly sexualised female cyborg whose physical state results directly from a dangerous desire to move between mechanical spaces. I
argue that her attraction lies in both her own bodily fusion of human and mechanical parts, and the possibility she offers others of experiencing
this fusion, albeit temporarily, through sexual relations.
Techno Sex: Ammanit?s "Terro"
Niccol? Ammaniti is one of the "Giovani cannibali" writers ? a group formed in Italy in the 1990s whose "pulp fiction" approach to literature deliberately foregrounded drug culture, violence, vulgar language, and
sexual activity22 "Ferro" is a rather crude tale whose young male narrator,
tired of watching pornographic films alone, goes in search of bodily con tact. His visions and fantasies of women are artificially enhanced, with impossibly pneumatic breasts, and he significantly refers to the desired body as "qualcosa" not "qualcuno," setting the scene for a posthuman
encounter. Our anticipation mounts as he races his car through the streets of Rome, challenging other vehicles at traffic lights; his car becomes a mechanical realisation of his desired virility as he lives the futurist
dream. Commenting on his 1996 screen adaptation of J. G. Ballard's 1973 novel Crash, David Cronenberg described the car as a "mobile bedroom,"
a technological signifier of sexual performance that vitally consolidates modern masculinity23 Ammaniti's narrative exploits this omnipresent
cultural association from the outset, initially presenting the car as an extension of the protagonist's sexual prowess. Subsequently, in an echo of the polyvalent eroticism expressed by the futurists, he fuses car, woman and man to allow the protagonist total domination of both tech
nology and the female body, as well as an auto-erotic experience.
Our worst suspicions about the protagonist are confirmed as, having arrived at the Olympic Village where prostitutes circulate, he xenopho bically dismisses prospective women of colour, preferring "una giovane
ragazza bianca. Poco pratica ma esperta.. .. Provocante e t?mida" (305).
When he finally locates a suitable individual, she takes him to a ram shackle house, where his attempts at sexual intercourse with her are thwarted by the appearance of her father who beats him and threatens him with a bread knife. However, it then transpires that contrary to appearances the father does indeed want the young man to have inter course, but with his other daughter Piera who lives in the cellar. Terrified and reeling from the blows he has sustained, the protagonist is pushed down into the dim cellar where he comes upon the iron woman alluded
to in the title.
Piera is a blinding vision of metal, with mechanical prostheses in place of arms and legs, a mass of chrome plates and microchips. At first,
the narrator is afraid, seeing her as "Un terminator. Un cyborg" (315).
However, upon closer inspection he notices that Piera's prosthetic body consists of German car technology ? Porsche shock absorbers like those he has fitted on his own FIAT ? and he becomes excited. Piera tells the
story of the accident which left her in this state, and how she wants a child to keep her company The protagonist needs no further encour agement, and jumps on top of her, negotiating her gears and steering.
Piera's body becomes arousing to the protagonist when he recognises her technology and can align his attraction to her with his sexually charged relationship to his car. Rather appropriately, Piera's accident resulted from her obsessive practice of passing from one moving car to another, between interior and exterior spaces, linking her body tem porarily with technology. When this temporary fusion is made perma nent her relationship to her prosthetic body is glossed over as if it pre
sented no problems whatsoever, as if she had achieved her desire.
This scene supports J. G. Ballard's prediction about the future of human sexual interaction when he asserts that
organic sex, body against body, skin area against skin area is becoming no longer possible. . . . What we're getting is a whole new order of sex ual fantasies, involving a different order of experiences, like car crashes,
like travelling in jet aircraft, the whole overlay of new technologies. . . .24
Furthermore, Cronenberg argues that "we have already incorporated the car into our understanding of time, space, distance and sexuality. To want to merge with it literally in a more physical way seems a good metaphor. There is a desire to fuse with techno-ness." Ammaniti's story
can be seen to realise this futurist romance, ending with an elopement as the narrator and Piera abscond from the house, pausing only to disable the antitheft device her father has fitted to her mechanical body The final sentences look forward, giving a postmodern ironic twist to a hack neyed ending, anticipating a bright future where man and woman machine live happily ever after. However, it cannot be denied that
Piera's role in events is far from ideal. Her mechanised frame, treated as a personal commodity by her father, allows a conflation of woman and vehicle that the protagonist seems to have desired from the outset. Piera is literally a machine, a stark reification of woman as sex machine, or baby machine, the only two roles available to her. It is perhaps no acci dent ? and is certainly in keeping with futurist pronouncements on women and desire ? that the woman capable of arousing romance and instilling family values in a selfish, self-glorifying, serial exploiter of women, is partly mechanised.
What strikes me about this representation is that Piera experiences cyborg embodiment as an oppressing condition that confines her within a rigid notion of femininity. Woman becomes mechanised body, unable
to move beyond her role as sexual object or reproductive entity. Although she attempts to flee her situation, Piera escapes from her pimping, neg lectful father only as another man's possession; a man who will surely value her only as a sexual object. In a world where technology is as per vasive and ubiquitous a social force as gender hierarchies (Terry 3), we
cannot escape the power of either, as Piera's experience demonstrates.
Haraway's manifesto was notable for its use of the cyborg as a trans
gressive emblem, as a multifaceted phenomenon used ironically to sub vert the binary categories of contemporary culture. It is a contradictory
figure that ?
if developed as she envisages ?
could potentially enable the collapse of totalizing theories and traditional hierarchies. For Haraway, the cyborg's very hybridity offers a way out of rigid gender categories, and was intended as emblematic of a new freedom in socialist-feminist movements. Indeed, Braidotti's introduction to the Italian translation of Haraway's manifesto hails the cyborg as an empowering challenge to technophobia and essentialist conceptions of femininity25 Despite the apparently transgressive nature of its content, however, Ammaniti's work reinforces an outdated, normative female role. Indeed, as if to
compensate for any futuristic implications, the story is based on rather clich?d tabular blueprints of the damsel in distress rescued by a manly hero.26 However, rather than unravelling the ideological impetus of this narrative model, Ammaniti reinforces a misogynistic myth of female emancipation that serves only to transport the female in question from one location to another, without substantially altering her status. Works by the "Giovani cannibali" have been hailed as evoking "a transgressive
sexuality that surpasses any possible taboo" (Antonello 42). Although some texts by the "cannibali" do indeed breach normative notions of sexuality, many, like Ammaniti's story, fit easily within a rather too well established
tradition of female prostitution and male objectification of women. Notably, feminist critical engagements with the "cannibali" do problematize the misoginistic presentation of female characters by male authors. For
example, Stefania Lucamante (102-03) observes that "women appear as favorite targets of men's rage, which manifests itself through ritual vio lence and casual sexual encounters," and that women are depicted as
"pulpy" in that they hold no significance to the plot but "merely repre
sent cheap merchandise."
Interestingly, the use of contemporary, postmodern features as a mask to reactionary, normative values has been identified as a widespread trend in contemporary science fiction comics and cyberpunk fiction. As Nicola Nixon argues in her essay "Cyberpunk: Preparing the Ground for
Revolution or Keeping the Boys Satisfied?" many such texts are
in the end, not radical at all. [Their] slickness and apparent subversive ness conceal a complicity with 80s conservatism [or any other strand of
conventional normativity] which is perhaps confirmed by the astonish
ing acceptance of the genre by such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the New York Times. (204)
Comparable phenomena can be identified in Italian cyberpunk comics, notably in Stefano Tamburini's character Ranxerox:
un moderno Frankenstein costruito con i pezzi di una fotocopiatrice, che si aggira in una Roma degradata e apocalittica, assolutamente fantasci entifica. Un golem di m?tallo e lattice, cinico e spietato, il cui ?nico punto debole ? il suo amore "sint?tico" per Lubna, una capricciosa e detesta
bile Lolita. (Stampa alternativa)
Images of the happy couple together show Lubna as small enough to be carried in one hand, and often semi-naked ? a far cry from Harawa/s vision of liberated female identity through interaction with cyborgs
(fig. 2). Tamburini created Ranxerox in 1977 for the American inspired comic Cannibale, which he set up with
Vincenzo Sparagna, Filippo Scozzari, Andrea Pazienza and Tanino Libera tore. The strip proved so popular that when Cannibale folded, Ranxerox's
exploits were then serialised in its suc cessor Frigidaire, established in 1980, and are published in France, America, and Japan among other countries. Ranxerox was created when "uno studelinquente proietta nel coatto costruito dalla foto copiatrice rubata all'universit? il pro prio essere violento" (Stampa alterna tiva). He is described as representing
"the depths Of OUr Id [where] We See Fi8- 2: Ranxerox and Lubna (source: http://
ri . j ,i i , c i ripfiles.e-workers.de/archiv/harhar/
reflected the base parts of ourselves page2htm) that would take what it wants with no
compromise, no apology" (Corben).
Freud defines the id as chaotic, disorganised, primitive, illogical, con tradictory, highly bodily, unaware of value judgements (good/evil, morality), dominated by the pleasure principle: in short, "instinctual cathexes seeking discharge ? that, in our view, is all there is in the id" ("The Dissection of
the Psychical Personality" 74). If the id is a source of unbridled energy ? libido, anxiety, hatred and violence ?
then Ranxerox materially enacts the transfused id of his "studelinquente" creator. According to Pier Vittorio Tondelli, Ranxerox is "in grado di trasferirsi, senza brusche rotture, nei travestimenti dell'uomo primitivo o di quello spaziale e galattico" (201).
Although he does not develop the point, Tondelli has incisively identified the simultaneously futuristic and brute nature of many cyborg characters ? a further binary that reflects dualistic conceptions of ego/id, mapped unproblematically onto the psyche/soma pairing. Here as elsewhere no
space is afforded for any holistic or even basically integrated approach to the self, despite Freud's own comments regarding the bodily ego.
Ranxerox, like Ammaniti's protagonist, is driven by unmediated id, conforming to, rather than challenging Freud's definition, performing a male fantasy of a self liberated from the regulating influence of the ego. In a feminist analysis, these scenarios are striking for two reasons:
first, for the way in which certain types of "instinctual" drive are pre
sented as transcendent, as though some masculine "instincts" tran
scend the male bodies that are said to be their origin; second, for attempts to naturalise such instincts, thus asserting the inevitability of certain "male" behaviours. It must be remembered that although we think about the id as instinctual, it remains, nevertheless, deeply medi ated by culture. Ranxerox and Ammaniti's protagonist can be seen to represent the id of patriarchal culture: their primitive misogyny mas querades as futuristic heroics, "keeping the boys satisfied" in an exploitative realisation of the "libidinous" civilisation suggested by
Marcuse as an alternative to repressive "technologised society."27
Conclusions
If "la letteratura fant?stica finge di raccontare una storia per poter rac contare altro" (Ceserani 37), that "altro" is not always obvious to its author, initial readers, or critics, but nevertheless insistently demands to be recognised. Indeed, often "it takes hard work not to see" the "alterna
tive" stories woven into a narrative (Morrison 17).28
With this in mind, drawing together the analyses profiled in this arti cle it seems that the fictional cyborg serves as a vehicle for two main, related areas of inquiry. First, cyborg characters enable authors to narra tivize the relationship between mind and body in multitudinous ways.
Second, they allow exploration of the ever-changing balance between ego and id, the effects of privileging of one over the other and/or severing their fundamental interrelatedness. Furthermore, it appears that charac ters looking to establish a relationship with a cyborg partner may do so in order to consolidate a particular (im)balance of rational/libidinal self.
Many of the characters considered above are presented as experiencing their psychic and somatic selves as radically disconnected; a split echoed in depictions of ego/id as an opposition that can be easily mapped onto that of mind/body As argued above, Ranxerox is presented as possessing no regulatory ego, and therefore unleashes the force of his unmediated id which has the effect of partially naturalising violent impulses. Ammaniti's
protagonist privileges his (patriarchal) "instinctual" self, conveniently
stumbling across a "donna-macchina" who proves a willing accomplice
in his auto-erotic fantasies, consolidating his exploitative masculinity.
Without the input of a bodily ego, their behaviours are frozen at the level of the "uomo primitivo" identified by Tondelli. Conversely, Mino erases his id completely, contemporaneously to his efforts, in time-honoured Cartesian fashion, to lose the treacherous weight of his body Finally Laura's struggles show an attempt at r?int?gration of the fragmented self. She may be disembodied, but her rational self is overcome by vio lent impulses in a desperate attempt to regain the body through which a more balanced development of her psychic life might be achieved.
All cyborgs mentioned are the product of male fantasy: both that of the author and that of the male character who constructs them, or seeks them out. Caronia views the creation of artificial beings as "il tentativo di ripetere il processo di creazione della vita sotto il contrallo completo dell'uomo, del tutto svincolato dalla naturalit?." In light of this, woman, as "la depositar?a di quel residuo di 'naturale'" that could impede the total realisation of the project, constitutes a threat which requires domination (Caronia, II corpo virtuale 26). Paula's female sensuality and corporeal presence perturb Mino, whose energies are directed towards the (re)creation of his unsexed, elec tronic, autonomous self. Endriade (re)creates his former wife, depriving her of the technological reproductive abilities he has developed. The pro tagonist of "Ferro" is happy to settle with a female partner who we assume will bear children, but the extreme mechanisation of her body, and its con flation with the vehicle introjected into his own body image, mean that
this reproduction enables a highly narcissistic form of reproduction.
As Bordo argues, Cartesian dualism effects a severing of relations between humans and nature both on an epistemological and an onto
logical level. This condition of detachment can be viewed through the lens of a "masculine" epistemology that reascribes the potential for creativity to the male (108). As suggested above, technological advance and the power of scientific experiment have the potential to achieve much the same result. Returning to my original questions, it is worth reflecting on the overall pattern emerging from the texts analysed in light of this reascription of creative power. Despite their markedly different experi ences of embodiment, Laura, Paula and Piera perform the roles of tradi
tional woman: they either strongly desire children or represent sensual fleshiness, and their bodies are always dominated or colonised by the
masculine. In contrast, Endriade and Mino have creative agency, scien
tific power and the intellectual will to move beyond the biological human form by dispensing with corporeality, to varying degrees. Gender and sex roles are presented as inextricably pre-determined, in rigid binary opposition, and any hint of homosexual activity in the texts mentioned
(Olga's naked dance in II grande ritratto) is condemned as disgusting. Far from challenging normative values, then, these texts rely on and reinforce patriarchal social organisation, while depriving women of their unique
ability to bear children ? much in line with Lombroso's position. Perhaps
the most transgressive aspect of any texts considered is Mino's desire to be castrated, to lose the male genitals that have come to symbolise patri archal authority and dominance. However, even this decision is moti vated by a desire to transcend what he sees as the cloying distraction of
female identity.
Returning to the notion of the fantastic, ?talo Calvino comments that
authors of fantastic narrative ? romantic and anti-romantic alike ? were
influenced by Rousseau's crisis of faith in the redemptive power of nature and the Enlightenment conte philosophique. As a result,
il racconto fant?stico nasce come sogno a occhi aperti dell'idealismo filos?fico, con la dichiarata intenzione di rappresentare la realt? del mondo interiore, soggettivo, dando a esso una dignit? pari o maggiore
a quella del mondo dell7oggettivit? dei sensi. (1674-75)
A comparable break in the rapport with nature features strongly in the texts considered here, and interiority, especially the unconscious, plays a major part in the denouement of each text. However, whether intention
ally or unintentionally, cyborg narratives reveal the importance of the body in psychic development, and function in part as a warning against detaching ourselves too definitively from our corporeality. If a key theme of fantastic literature is "il tema dello scienziato che sfida le leggi della
natura finch? una notte la sua audacia non viene messa a dura prova"
(Calvino 1674), in cyborg narratives the break with nature means that this type of repercussion can be side-stepped. New laws are being forged in line with the forging of the masculine epistemology identified by Bordo, with the common effect of devaluing the body. At one extreme, this manifests itself in cyberfiction as a desire to lose one's body in cyber space ? a paradoxical flight from "feminine" corporeality to the virtual womb of the matrix, which derives etymologically from mater (Butler,
Bodies That Matter 31). At the other extreme, in a recent theoretical text we find Mario Perniola's concept of a "sessualit? neutra" that conceptua
lises our physical selves as "un corpo estraneo o meglio una veste estranea
che non appartiene a nessuno" (13). In between, hegemonic masculinity exploits technologized or reviled female bodies, replacing biological coherence with fragmented technology. With regard to this fragmentation, Braidotti alerts us that, for example,
the new reproductive technologies, by officializing the instrumental denaturalisation of the body, also institutionalize dismemberment as the modern condition, thus transforming the body into a factory of detach
able pieces. (Nomadic Subjects 61)
Given the importance of embodied experience to psychic develop ment, surely our impulse must be to resist the widespread onset of this
condition. However, if we are to embrace technology as liberating and empowering, as Haraway and Braidotti would have us do, we need alternative literary images to fire our imagination and dismantle patri archal ideologies. Rather than taking up where (discredited) theorists
like Lombroso left off, science fiction, as shown by many feminist writers,29 has the ability to such progressive alternative realities. What must be remembered, however, is that technology does not guarantee a new, more liberating and more inclusive moral framework.
This article has endeavoured to demonstrate the validity of perform ing a feminist analysis on cyborg narratives, and the importance of dis entangling the ideologies coded into each work. It has shown that Italian cyborg narratives, dating both from the 1960s and 1990s are profoundly saturated with problematic discourses of gender, sex and sexuality, and that recent publications do not necessarily constitute any more of a chal lenge to normative values. As to why this might be the case in Italy when in other cultures such texts exist alongside a rapidly increasing number of works that subvert dominant norms, we might speculate that it is connected with the arguably rather traditional character of Italian cul ture and cultural production with regard to gender and sexuality in par ticular. Indeed, despite the activities and successes of feminism,
Italy remains a country in which gender relations are still often formed in the mould of an underlying masculinism ? old-fashioned or new fashioned, covert or manifest ? and this masculinism both sustains old traditions and invents new ones. (Passerini 157)
Indeed, even within academic institutions, responses to women's studies
and gender studies have remained rather lukewarm,30 due to cultural resistance to such discourses. The more widely recognized strands of sci ence fiction writing remain the province of male authors who, as science fiction author Nicoletta Vallorani remarks, tend to depict women in reduc tive, stereotypical ways.31 For Vallorani, the body is a key element of the genre since "nella fantascienza pi? che altrove, il discorso sui generi passa attraverso il corpo." Referring to Haraway and cyberfeminism, she points out that "i saperi dicotomici non sono pi? in grado, oggi, di dipanare il nodo dei rapporti tra i sessi. La questione ? molto pi? complessa; sicu
ramente nel mondo moderno non ? pi? possibile dividere il mondo in due meta."32 In contrast to the stereotypical depictions of women and dualistic representations of the self that are common to much male authored cyborg fiction, feminist portrayals of cyborgs seek to problema tize and disrupt such approaches to identity. Therefore, we might tenta tively attribute the persistence of Cartesian approaches to the mind-body relation in Italian cyborg narratives to the relative absence of Italian cyber feminist writers. Figures such as Vallorani constitute a vital presence on the Italian science fiction landscape, and any more sustained critical evaluation