The Co-opted Cyborg: Self-Construction and the Reproduction of Power in Female Technological Bodies in Popular Visual Culture
TL;DR
The paper argues that female cyborg bodies do not automatically achieve post-gender liberation and are often reabsorbed into patriarchal and capitalist structures through traumatic empowerment, aesthetic discipline, and the illusion of free choice.
Abstract
As science-fiction imagery, video games, and cosmetic technologies permeate everyday culture, female boides are increasingly presented as cyborgs, mechanical bodies, virtual avatars, and beautified bodies. Against this background, this paper examines whether these technological bodies truly realize the emancipatory promise of cyborg feminism. Drawing on Donna Haraway's cyborg feminism, Laura Mulvey's theory of the male gaze, and Anne Balsamo's theory of gendered body technologies, this study adopts close reading, case analysis, and textual comparison to analyze popular cultural works including Frankenstein, Love, Death & Robots, The Substance, The Plastic Surgery Game, NieR: Automata , and Cyberpunk 2077 . The paper argues that female cyborg bodies do not automatically achieve post-gender liberation. Instead, they are often reabsorbed into patriarchal and capitalist structures through traumatic empowerment, aesthetic discipline, and the illusion of free choice. This oppressive reproduction of power takes different forms across literary texts, animated shorts, media representations of cosmetic enhancement, and open-world video games, yet these varied forms together constitute a unified cross-media logic of discipline directed at female technological bodies.