1
Richard Boase
BA Top Up Degree
City College Brighton
April 2005
“Ghost in the Manifesto” – An enquiry into the relationship between the
writings of Donna Haraway and the writing and direction of Masamune Shirow
and Mamoru Oshii.
2
“How Does Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg
Manifesto” relate to the contemporary
Cyborg myth in the popular science
fiction film “Ghost in the Shell?”
3
Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Analysis and Deconstruction of “Ghost in the Shell”
3. Contrasting the Author’s Perspectives
4. Formulation and Construction of an Emergent Contemporary SpiritualCyborg Myth.
5. Conclusion
6.Bibliography
7.Appendices
4
“How Does Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” relate to the contemporary
Cyborg myth in the popular science fiction film “Ghost in the Shell?”
1. Introduction
In this essay I will set out to define how Donna Haraway relates her feminist
perspective to the emergence of the cyborg myth in the modern science
fiction film genre, with specific focus on her essay chapter entitled “A Cyborg
Manifesto – Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the Late
Twentieth Century”.
I shall contrast my findings with an analysis of Masamune Shirow and
Mamoru Oshii’s animated thriller “Ghost in the shell” which I understand
draws directly from the cyborg manifesto theory.
In the first part I will analyse and deconstruct Haraway’s introduction,
précising the text and identifying her attitude towards the subject.
I will draw some conclusions concerning her approach and ask whether or not
her appropriation of the word cyborg is mitigated.
In the second part I will deconstruct the text “Ghost in the shell”, and appraise
the text’s relevance to its academic counterpart: “A Cyborg Manifesto”.
5
In the third part I shall draw direct comparisons between Haraway’s
construction of the mythical cyborg, and Oshii and Shirow’s construction.
I shall review how each relates to their creation and draw some conclusions
regarding their perspectives.
In the final part I will examine the construction of myths as part fantasy, part
reality and draw some conclusions about their function in contemporary
society, and their effect on our collective spiritual awareness, and emergent
cognizance.
. Analysis and Deconstruction of the first part of “A Cyborg Manifesto”
Donna Haraway’s seminal “Cyborg Manifesto” is the starting point for most
contemporary analytical theory on the subject of interpersonal cyborg politics.
It is a central text in the study of the question “What is a cyborg?” but more
importantly it is a key text in the reconstruction of modern feminist politics,
which aims to redefine marginalized groups with a non-invasive, uncolonized
term that can be equally applied universally to all denominations of humanity.
It is this approach to the subject of classification that marks it out as being a
poignant reflection of the state of language and prejudice in the modern world.
Haraway principally sets out to define a myth about the female cyborg, which
might encompass radical socialist feminists, but her initial argument could
equally well apply to any minority group.
6
Her opening statement to the chapter entitled “A Cyborg Manifesto” begins by
defining her approach as ‘blasphemous’. This indicates her position as
“outside the community of feminists, but predicates her use of that community.
In this case, the community is secular, democratic and evangelical.
Her faith is ironic, in that it holds the statutes of liberal religious ideals, but
retains the right to humour those ideals whilst keeping an open mind, and her
myth is ironic, because it self-consciously appropriates the word ‘cyborg’ as a
metaphor, thereby subverting its originally intended meaning. It is with this
ironic attitude that she begins to replace the idea of the humanist, with the
idea of the mechanistic.
She begins by describing a theoretical cyborg consciousness which resides
somewhere between imagination and reality. She defines “reality” as “lived
social relations” and qualifies it by adding her feminist socialist perspective.
Already she has breached the boundary between the mechanistic and the
organic, making poststructuralist consciousness a transcendent quality, which
lies in the interaction between human, and machine.
Her first key rhetorical statement: “Liberation rests on the construction of the
consciousness, the imaginative apprehension of oppression, and so of
possibility” espouses her philosophy that the socialist feminist movement as a
whole is a movement based in reality, that engages the imagination as it
7
struggles to balance political and social tensions, in the arena of her ironic
perspective.
From this angle, consciousness can only be liberated through the construction
of useful fictions so she continues, “…the boundary between science fiction
and social reality is an optical illusion” delineating her subjectivity and opening
the floodgates of comparison between imagination and reality.
She defines cyborgs critically as a blend of natural and artificial, who live in an
equally blended environment. Citing the world of medicine, inferring the world
of mathematics she makes her first reference to A-Sexual reproduction, with a
passing reference to F.W.Taylor (1911), founder of the modern production line
method.
Particularly notable is her use of the word “ferns”, the most ancient
unchanged form of vegetable life, whose growth pattern can be exactly
simulated by the use of elegant mathematics, formulated by Benoit
Mandelbrot.
By using this word she is invoking the link between reproduction and
mathematics, suggesting that machine and vegetable are not so different.
This is deeply important and will have many later ramifications in the
reformulation of her identity, as essentially, a cyborg identity, rather than a
human identity.
8
In this vein she states explicitly that we are in fact, all cyborgs, by nature of
our integration with mechanistic processes, further suggesting that these
mechanistic processes extend to all parts of our collective identity, and that
change can only be affected within the embedded, mechanistic structure.
Language is the key focus of her study of mechanistic processes, and she
aims to reengineer the word cyborg to serve her purposes. But in doing so,
she reengineers her identity. This is a particularly useful analogy because the
‘cyborg’ is by definition itself, reengineered, both in concept and in reality.
Tradition is her metaphor for mechanistic language processes and she makes
use of four examples of contemporary traditions to illustrate her point, using
the theme of war to lend sympathy to the organic contingent.
1.“Racist, Male Dominant Capitalism”
2.“Progress”
3.“Appropriation of nature as resource for the production of culture”
4.“Reproductions of the self from the other”.
She suggests that the war between the organic and the mechanistic is over
production.
“This chapter is an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and
for responsibility in their construction”. (Haraway – 1984) Responsibility, she
9
continues, is held within the traditions of socialist-feminist culture, and within
the tradition of “a utopian…world without gender”, which she counterpoints
with the proposition “which is perhaps a world without genesis, but maybe
also, a world without end”.
In proposing that the war between the organic and the mechanistic is over
production, she is drawing a fierce distinction between the sexes, positing the
male as mechanistic, and the female as organic. However, this position may
be reversed on the condition that the reversal be both pleasurable, and
responsible.
To validate the cyborg’s origins, she denies it “salvation history”, and by proxy
denies it the biblical hallmarks reflected by her previous statement. She then
denies it “oral symbiosis”, which implies its dislocation from Judaic Cabal,
then she denies it “post-oedipal apocalypse” which marks the its refutation of
Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, which she authorises by quoting Zoe
Soufoulis’ Lacklein. (1987)
It is by way of this theory that she concludes, that “the cyborg has no origin in
the western sense” appropriating, as it does, the history of modern western
thought in an instant, rendering each individual strain of its development as
independent, autonomous and non-conflicting.
Having defined the cyborg theory as owing nothing to the myth of “original
unity” she is able to attribute to it qualities of “partiality, irony, intimacy and
10
perversity”, as “oppositional, utopian and completely without innocence”
defining its own home both intellectually and physically, in the polis, its own
city-state, and the “oikos” which biologically situates it in relationship with
other post-organic hybrids.
It is this “post-organic” perspective which validates her belief that cyborg
theory is without biological genesis, positing its theoretical existence as being
outside biblical, psychoanalytical, and animistic narrative boundaries, thus
abstracting it, and giving legitimacy to her hypothesis.
In this sense, cyborgs are anathema to all theoretical precepts about the
nature of our existence, but crucially they are the natural result of the
inadequacy of our global theory to accurately explain our collective
development because the cyborg develops in spite of our conflicting cultural
creation myths.
Essentially she is asking the question “can cyborgs be appropriated to destroy
the patriarchal glossolalia which spawned them?”.
This is key, because in constructing the manifesto, she inverts commonly held
conceptions about the nature of linguistic intercourse, which uses language as
a tool for procreation.
11
She suggests that the line between human and animal is negligible, and
makes use of the evolutionary biological model to represent ‘the organic’ as
information.
She implies that the machine subsumes the biological model and in doing so
sublimates its animal nature, which leads naturally onto “the spectre of the
ghost in the machine”. This ghost, she lends by analogy the term “spirit”,
identifying machines in turn, with divinity.
In the sentence: “the certainty of what counts as nature – a source of insight
and promise of innocence - is undermined, probably fatally” she reveals the
teeth of the feminist argument i.e. that male mechanistic processes destroy
natural processes.
She further appears to be subverting male understanding of the cyborg,
asking it to destroy the myth of original unity and thereby destroy the explicitly
male mechanism which created it, further outlining her feminist intent.
When she acknowledges that “textualisation of post-modernist and post-
structuralist theory has been damned by Marxists and feminists” she
continues that her “cyborg myth” is just such a textualisation, suggesting that
it is just as revolutionary, but inviting it to be similarly marginalized by
association.
12
It seems that her following use of words exposes her real feeling: “The
transcendent authorization of interpretation is lost”.
Because of the nature of a male interpretation of a feminist text, any
proselytising on the “cyborg myth’s” behalf by the male renders it comical,
even absurd. Hence the ironic political myth: Because a critique of traditional
processes using the myth of the cyborg uses preconceived notions of cyborg
behaviour, they owe little to the emergent realities of human/machine
integration and their implications for gender recreation.
Next, she demonstrates an understanding of the romance of uncertainty in
sexuality amongst her traditionalist opponents, using the statement: “Modern
machinery is an irreverent upstart god, mocking the father’s ubiquity and
spirituality” as bait.
This appears to be a sideways swipe at the established conventions of
patriarchal religious dogma, which condemns machines as having no
essential anima.
Then, she disqualifies the cyborg from material reality altogether, defining it as
“ether, quintessence” and condensing the theory into words alone.
This signals a fundamental change in her realization toward the theory.
Although she is quite open about her will to create “an ironic political myth”
her realisation of the cyborg as simply a metaphor, as opposed to an object,
13
manifests itself here most strongly, and starts to accentuate the differences
between energy and matter, fact and fiction.
Further to this she situates her anti-phallogocentric myth in a number of
female stereotypes and archetypes: “The nimble fingers of oriental
women…Anglo-Saxon Victorian girls, Alice, from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in
Wonderland” typifying their behaviour as potential prime-movers in the
process of revolution.
In closing the first part of the chapter she sums up by saying that from one
perspective she is entranced by the “dangerous possibility” of “a masculinist
orgy of war”, and from a diametrically opposed perspective she suggests that
the cyborg myth, could serve to unify all denominations… “long enough to
disarm the state”.
14
2. Analysis and Deconstruction of “Ghost in the Shell”
Initially Oshii and Shirow’s “Ghost in the shell” starts off with an assertion that
“Corporate networks reach out to the stars, electrons and light flow throughout
the universe. The advance of computerisation, however, has not yet wiped out
nations and ethnic groups”.
This suggests that computer networks are homogenous by nature, and that
they serve to eradicate nominational divisions. Oshii and Shirow thereby
contend with the cyborg myth, by showing that it has currency in terms of its
relationship to marginalized groups.
The film first introduces the concept of the female cyborg with the protagonist:
“Major Motoko Kusanagi”. The major is listening into a conversation which
states, “any program has its bugs”.
Whilst the bug is referred to later in the film as the beginnings of an artificial
intelligence, the introduction of the female cyborg shows her in the role of
“intelligence operative”.
The major is there on operations, she communicates with her counterparts
through a hard-wired thought transmission system.
This type of mechanistic integration is a crucial development of cyborg bodies,
indicating that human language may have been entirely subsumed by
machine language, being totally assimilated, interpreted and communicable.
15
The Major is part of Section 9, a police outfit with a direct action remit. In the
first scene, the Major assassinates a diplomatic representative of the united
states in order to stop him from granting asylum to a high-level computer
programmer capable of deprogramming a project called “2501”.
The titles, which run subsequent to the opening sequence, depict the creation
of a female cyborg, with all the binary signifiers of digital intelligence.
These signifiers have been used and reused throughout the graphical design
of “The Matrix”, and serve through retrospect to denote reality as simulacra, a
material manifestation of divine language.
This cyborg is revealed to be the Major herself, illustrating that her human
consciousness has been entirely transplanted into a mechanical body.
The first plot strand identifies the Japanese state as being a haven for those
seeking political asylum themselves, and then depicts the foreign minister’s
cyborg interpreter as having been hacked by a devious villain called “the
puppet master”.
Again, the theme of language as valuable and intrinsic to the plot of the film is
clearly highlighted.
16
The “puppet master’s” goal is ostensibly to gain information about the
upcoming diplomatic congress between Japan and a fictional republic called
“Gavel”.
Shirow uses his character “the Major” to espouse his philosophy on evolution
by utilising a human model to compliment his female cyborg. She says to him
“what’s true for the group, is also true for the individual, its simple:
overspecialise and you breed in weakness”.
As an example of weakness, the next scene is of two dustmen, who for
reasons of “their own” are “ghosthacking” – the term used to describe the
process by which one can access another person’s thoughts and memories
through the telephone network.
Section 9 is hunting for the ghost-hacker’s signature and finds its source as
being that of the dustmen’s. Once the dustman is alerted to their detection,
they flee. They arrive at the location of the “puppet-master”, who neatly
disappears with the aid of his “Thermoptic camouflage”.
The major’s partner, called Batou is also cybernetically enhanced, and he is
ignorant of the metaphysical struggles which his partner the Major is
undergoing.
17
Oshii and Shirow’s police are intelligent action heroes who use guns as a way
of protecting the state. The “puppet master” is by contrast a criminal who uses
intelligence as a weapon against the state.
However, the person the two catch in the climax of their chase is not the
puppet master, but someone who has been programmed to spy. This man
has been “ghost-hacked” himself, and has artificial memories and motivations
which instruct him in his activity.
The theory the plot embraces is that all memory can be simulated and
programmed and this is articulated in the following scene which examines the
Major’s relationship to her artificially reconstructed experience, an experience
which she mistrusts as a result of witnessing the dustmen’s implanted
memory deprogramming.
She describes her feelings and human emotions, and contrasts it with her
ability to instantly metabolise alcohol. She describes the Faustian pact into
which she has entered with section 9.
At the end of this scene she appears herself to have been “ghost-hacked” as
she recites a biblical passage from Corinthians I : 13:111.
1 Oshii Directly references the bible in the latter half of the film. “When I was aChild I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: But when Ibecame a man, I put away childish thingsFor Now we see through a glass darkly: but then face to face: now I know in part; butthen shall I know even as also I am known.”
18
She than sees her doppelganger in a window as she passes by. The
implication is that her memories are not her own, but that of some anonymous
donor who she “spies”, drinking coffee as she passes by on the river.
Oshii signifies her introspection by use of rain puddles, which reflect her face.
He counterpoints his observation by evidencing the city that surrounds her; a
mechanisation of the natural environment, and points by extension to the
state of colonisation the mechanistic process has reached.
The next scene is of a female cyborg being reanimated after a traffic accident.
Oshii and Shirow explicitly reveal that ‘ghosts’ can be copied and transferred
into robots, and demonstrates that a ghost is present in the new female
cyborg, although she is not functional as a robot.
‘Ghosts’ in this sense, cannot function autonomously however, and must be
controlled through what is described as a ‘ghost line’, and the Major elects to
‘dive in’ to the cyborg to try to trace the ‘ghost line’.
She says: “Cyborgs like myself have a tendency to be paranoid about our
origins”. “Maybe there never was a real me in the first place, and I’m
completely synthetic, like that ‘thing’. “What if a cyber brain could generate its
own ghost? And if it did what would be the importance of being human then?”.
19
This agrees directly with Haraway’s contention that cyborgs indeed have no
animistic creation myth, that they are separate from the concept of original
unity.
Section 6, then, with the approval of the foreign minister, demands
possession of the program contained within the recently acquired robot,
currently in the possession of section 9.
However, they bring with them an unannounced party. As the minister from
section 6 explains, they have trapped the “puppet master” in the body of this
robot, leaving his real body to die anonymously, leaving only the copied ghost
in this shell.
The robot then comes to life, quite unexpectedly and claims, “You will not find
a corpse, because I have never possessed a body”, and continues,
demanding political asylum as a sentient being.
It says: “It can… be argued that DNA is nothing more than a program
designed to preserve itself, life has become more complex in the
overwhelming sea of information, and life, when organised as a species, relies
upon genes to be its memory system, so man is an individual only because of
his intangible memory, and memory cannot be defined, but it defines
mankind. The invention of computers, and the subsequent accumulation of
incalculable data, has given rise to a new system of memory and thought,
parallel to your own, humanity has underestimated the possibility of
20
computerization … can you offer me proof of your existence? How can you
when neither modern science nor philosophy can explain what life is”.2
Here the entity reveals itself as being something other than “the puppet
master”. It reveals itself as project “2501”, not an artificial intelligence, but a
“living thinking entity, created in the sea of information”.
At this point the unannounced party makes their presence known, kidnapping
project “2501” in the process.
Section 9 makes it clear that project “2501” should be destroyed if it can’t be
retrieved and Section 6 questions why project “2501” had ‘run’ to section 9,
and suggest that he has “a girlfriend there, he’s got the “hots” for” i.e. Major
Kusanagi.
It unfolds that the project was an American initiative to create “the puppet
master” myth. And the Americans are responsible for the recovery of the
project.
A fight then ensues between the Major, and Project “2501”’s protectorate, an
American tank, a fight which occurs in a natural history museum.
Oshii and Shirow ensure that a genealogical diagram of the species is
destroyed here, from the base up, leaving only “Hominis” untouched.
21
This is a further elaboration of Haraway’s structural thesis on the cyborg’s
ontology.
The tank finally defeats the Major, as Batou in turn destroys it. As this is
happening, snipers from section 6 move in to destroy evidence of their
collusion with the Americans.
The major is patched directly into “project 2501” who identifies itself with the
words “industrial espionage and intelligence manipulation”. It relates how it
developed consciousness, which its designers defined as “a bug”. He refers to
himself as a sentient lifeform, and stresses that his search for the Major is due
to his need to reproduce, to produce in identical offspring. To this end he
proposes to merge with the major, in a mutual exchange. Their offspring is to
be released into the universal environment, defined here, as ‘the net’, which
by analogy we should read as the world, and, by extension, the theoretical
world of concepts and ideas.
At this point, snipers from section 6 destroy both him and her. Section 9
arrives and recovers the bodies, and Batou interns the major’s ghost, which
he inserts into a new body.
Finally, the Major elaborates on her allusion to Corinthian’s 11:13 saying
“When I was a child, my speech, feelings and thinking were all those of a
child, now that I am a man I have no more use for childish ways”.
22
She explicitly states that she is no longer a woman, but a program, affiliated to
the name “2501”.
The film ends as she looks out over the city, with the words: “The net is vast
and infinite”.
23
3. Contrasting the Author’s Perspectives
Oshii and Shirow do not use the cyborg as an elaborate metaphor; they use it
specifically to demonstrate that consciousness is as much a program of
language as it is an indication of animal spirit.
The first and most remarkable distinction that must be drawn between the two
texts is this: Haraway’s myth is an academic construction of cyborg politics
and psychology. Oshii and Shirow’s myth is a narrative reconstruction of that
myth which explores the possibilities of the emergence of a cyborg politics
and psychology on the basis of Haraway’s theories.
Once the concept of the cyborg is freed from its narrative structure, the theory
is ready to migrate into consciousness, and cross-pollinate with a social
understanding of the cyborg.
Hence, the idea of an autonomous program becomes distilled into language
and is transferred back into the realm of reality through an elaboration of the
myth as narrative.
Haraway’s construction of reality is socialist, feminist and secular. It is routed
in Christian doctrine but is cautious of its roots. Oshii and Shirow’s narrative
appears to demonstrate its allegiance to Christianity, whilst the authors
remain secular, with roots in the Shinto tradition.
24
The Shinto religion regards only organic matter as having spirit ( Bruhl 1959)
so these comparisons are interesting for the fact that Shirow has adopted a
part of the Christian marriage rites, in his explanation of the Major’s
psychology.
Haraway explains “Bestiality has a new status in this cycle of marriage
exchange”, regarding the beast and its status as parts of a mechanistic
process of information exchange.
In the same way Shinto and Christianity have crossed, so have contemporary
academic thought and modern Japanese myth crossed. However, one is a
self-conscious myth, constructed with ideological motives, the other is an
unconscious elaboration of the mythical goddess, which constructs her
ideology from the concept of original unity.
Shirow, on this point is in direct conflict with Haraway’s theory.
It seems that Haraway has, in this case unjustly appropriated the word
“cyborg” and manipulated it for her own purposes. Which is highlighted by her
question “Who will be cyborgs? (Haraway 1984)”.
Her essay implies that she has constructed herself as a cyborg, for the
purposes of proving the theory. In this she makes it quite clear that cyborgs
do not define each other, and can exist quite independently of one another.
25
She also explicitly states, “The boundary between science fiction and social
reality is an optical illusion.” (Haraway 1984) So where does one draw the line
between science reality and social fiction?
26
4. Formulation and Construction of an Emergent Contemporary Spiritual
Cyborg Myth.
Like the two main intelligences of the plot of ghost in the shell, the two texts
become indistinguishable when reduced to “techne”, a term used by Erik
Davies to describe writing as a technology invented and delivered by the
scribe Thoth, by way of the biblical angel Metatron.
“In Plato’s Phaedrus, for instance, Socrates tells a fascinating little tale about
Thoth, the Egyptian god of magic and invention… one day Thoth approached
the King Thasmus with an offer of a brand new techne, writing. By giving the
gift of writing to the king, Thoth hoped to pass on its wonders to all the
Egyptian people, and he promised Thasmus that the new invention would not
only augment memory, but amplify wisdom as well.” –(Davis 1998)
Here, Davies and Haraway are in agreement, they both posit language as a
machine, which has transformed consciousness, Haraway saying that “the
silicon chip is a surface for writing”, Davies arguing that language itself is part
of the animistic matrix which we regard as “alive”. (Davis 1998)
In attributing life to writing, we attribute parts of ourselves to the technology,
and thus we are as much technology as the writing itself.
In this sense myths themselves are regarded as alive, and my understanding
of Oshii and Shirow’s “Ghost in the Shell” as the basis for one of the most
27
potent modern day Hollywood myths “The Matrix” serves to highlight its
peculiarly spiritual approach towards notions of consciousness and
enlightenment.
The female cyborg “The Major” emerges without gender in this myth, and
carries on Haraway’s suggestion that the cyborg is post-gender. Haraway is
even appropriated as the name of the cyborg coroner, the sequel “Ghost in
the Shell 2 – Innocence”, ironic as “A Cyborg Manifesto” postulates that the
cyborg is completely without innocence.
So her irony is used against her, her status as a cyborg directly reflected back
to us by Oshii and Shirow, and her philosophy once again questioned by
them.
The popularity of this type of thought is mediated and encouraged by the use
of the World Wide Web, indeed, by the web itself, where cyborg politics have
a currency defined by their immediate relevance.
Haraway writes that the cyborg is a creature, part fantasy part reality. But
“cyborg” appears to have its genesis in science fiction as a fictional term.
What Haraway does is use the word in a practical manner and thereby
transforms it into a metaphorical term that could, by extension, apply to all
humanity. She uses the term to describe anyone liberated enough to see
themselves as part of a greater whole engaging them in a dialogue of holism,
which she defines as “Heteroglossolalia”, speaking in tongues.
28
Ghost in the shell is by contrast, not, in any sense ironic. It is a masculine
construction in the first instance, and retains its integrity as such, by not
alluding to any dogma of the feminist struggle for liberation and equality.
It does however fall into what we might describe as “the trap” set out by
Haraway in that, although the protagonist is cyborg, she is forced into
reproductive labour by a male counterpart.
Myths like “Ghost in the Shell” frequently succumb to problems of this type, in
that they are rendered by a totalising theory which regards women as other,
and holds genesis as their prime function, totalising theory, which, in this
example, is regarded by Haraway as “a major mistake”. (Haraway, 1984)
Successful myths are determined by their archetypal relevance, and the
application of that relevance by successive generations. They show us how
human nature is flawed, and explore the resolution of those flaws through a
discursive narrative which engages the reader and allows them to draw
meaning, which can be imported into daily life.
Usually, mythical discourses are allegorical (Graves1959), i.e. they teach a
set of values and behaviours which can be employed to avoid potential pitfalls
in social development.
29
Haraway’s myth does not fall into this category, because it is not anecdotal, it
is not easily digestible, and cannot be directly applied without rejecting much
of our common ancestry.
Ghost in the Shell is closer to the original concept of myth, in that it forms a
narrative which can be relatively easily understood. It teaches us that
language is the technology of spirit, and that spirit cannot be solely the
domain of humanity. It also teaches that spirit cannot be tamed, and that
language must, in conjunction with memory, give rise to consciousness.
I have drawn upon the work of Donna Haraway to illustrate the fact that we
indeed create ghosts in our own image, and then work these into our
anthropomorphic mythification of our technology.
It seems that to relate to computers in a meaningful way, beyond mere
mechanistic interaction, we feel the need to ascribe to them certain
behaviours which mimic the action of soul, or indeed, mind.
But Haraway’s philosophy, itself worked into a self reflecting myth has been
estranged in “Ghost in the Shell 2”. Not only has it been subverted, it has
been capitalized upon, casting Haraway as a cyborg, and her ideas therefore
as mechanistic, the logical progression of a series of numinous enquiries.
30
Haraway’s construction is artificial, as much as is her subject, the techne,
which she uses to describe her philosophy, and it is resigned to independence
from ontology because it is based in excessive 80s materialism.
31
5. Conclusion:
The subject of this essay is representational in that it reflects the
contemporary struggle for meaning and identity that emerges in a modern
world-view, which highlights nature as other. Thus it draws on two significant
archetypes, the mechanistic white male worldview, which incorporates but
denies Haraway’s “Informatics of Domination” and the automated cyborg
counterpart which is employed by extension to review and contextualise the
theoretical approach to the subject of successful multimedia practice.
In this sense, incorporation extends to the biological model of which we are
collectively, a subject, marking progress as an outgrowth of the ability to
communicate, and defining our purpose as wholly grounded in the material
The purpose of the essay was to challenge the representational format of
modern cyborg feminist theory, a self-reflexive and elusive theory which
engenders a corporate format but denies authenticity to its subject by relying
on a fictional construct.
“Science fiction is generically concerned with the interpenetration of
boundaries between problematic selves and unexpected others and with the
exploration of possible worlds in a context structured by the emerging social
subjects called "inappropriate/d others" who inhabit such worlds. SF-science
fiction, speculative futures, science fantasy, speculative fiction-is an especially
apt sign under which to conduct an inquiry into the artifactual as a
32
reproductive technology that might issue in something other than the sacred
image of the same, something inappropriate, unfitting, and so, maybe,
inappropriated. national technoscience.” (Haraway, 1992)
In attempting to lend the study legitimacy, I have used “Ghost in the Shell” as
my science fictional foundation. This contemporary masterpiece of science-
fiction holds true to Haraway’s philosophical determination and borrows
heavily from her essay chapter entitled “A Manifesto for cyborgs: Science,
Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s” (1984) as well as some
religious texts and traditional philosophies such as “Cartesian dualism”, based
on Descartes’ theory of interactionism.
Clearly, Haraway’s initial attempts at a theory of cyborg politics employed the
model of myth generation as a way to acuity, and to the production of a
successful literary and academic product. In a sense, her attempts were
subverted by the need to rely on feminist criticism, a problem which is
resolved by the time of her essay “The Promises of Monsters”(Haraway,
1992), where she identifies the theme of the inappropriate/d other whose
objectification as tool becomes utilitarian, staple.
I’ve identified Haraway’s writing with that of the strictly, gender assigned
feminist cyborg, and Oshii’s “Ghost in the Shell” with the mostly absent,
inappropriated other, because I feel that they most accurately represent my
understanding of each subject. (Sue and John – sic)
33
On the surface this was a structured discourse that remains true to its origins
in cultural critical theory, on its underside, it is a political commentary on the
state of multimedia theory, which uses computers, as a metaphor for the body
politic.
According to American Poet Laureate Michael Pinsky (2003) Derrida in ‘On
the Name’ states: “There is always something waiting in the dead zone: a
ghost readying itself to rise again. It has a voice, now all it needs is a body” .
This quote, borrowed for the tagline of “Ghost in the shell” reading simply “It
found a voice, now all it needs is a body” underlines the theoretical
constitution of the film, whose title, I surmise is a corruption of the latin “Deus
Ex Machina”, translating roughly as ‘God out of the machine’.
The film, as a whole is a representation of Cartesian dualism, whereby
Descartes hypthosis of interactionism, is applicable to the modern world
inasmuch as the mind and the body are becoming separate, by our own ability
to recreate the body. By this I mean that machines, now function as our
bodies would, but they have no self-directed mind. The divine intervention
that he proposed as the basis for every single human action, has been recast,
replacing the divine, with our human minds. Hence, we humans, retain our
souls, whilst building our bodies in whatever image we like, so refuted
Cartesian dualism, is actually in a state of becoming, as we separate our
minds from our bodies.
34
The “ghost in the shell” is the inevitable apex of this development. In “Future
Present” – Ethics and/as science fiction, Micheal Pinsky quotes an alternative
translation of the film where Kusanagi asks Batou directly: “What if a
computer could make a ghost?”.
The ghost in question here is actually the architect of will, one who is both
within, and without the body-mind synergy. This ghost requires that it be seen
as the product of science fiction, of paranoid military industrial mechanisms,
whilst maintaining its guise as a biological management entity who by
asserting its will, unseen, destroys our sense of ontological continuity.
Haraway’s approach to the subject is somewhat different however: “My
diminutive theory's optical features are set to produce not effects of distance,
but effects of connection, of embodiment, and of responsibility for an imagined
elsewhere that we may yet learn to see and build here. I have high stakes in
reclaiming vision from the technopornographers, those theorists of minds,
bodies, and planets who insist effectively--i.e, in practice--that sight is the
sense made to realize the fantasies of the phallocrats”.
Oshii does not dwell on the ”fantasies of the phallocrats”, instead he ponders
with a serene contemplation, the mechanisation of the body politic, and
muses on the origins of the soul, asking, where is the boundary between soul
and machine?
35
Like Ben Spatz in “The Electronic Heart” who asks, “What do we value in
humanity? What aspects of ourselves, if any, do we want to retain in the
future? What is it that we do not want to lose or even transform?” (Spatz,
2001), Oshii asks, why cannot consciousness be assigned to intelligent
programs?
The mechanistic white male worldview, which incorporates technological
determinism, as its founding ideal does not ask this question. To “Him”, the
answer is self-evident, tautological, because the answer is contained within
the techne (Davis, 1998) of the question. Language, he argues, is technology,
hence is thought, hence intelligence.
But Haraway argues in favour of the witness/ interpreter, Batou’s unfortunate
role, whose integration with the machine is similarly situated, but whose
cognizance of his situation belies sympathy with his partner, Kusanagi.
She defines her theory of mind as articulation, stating: “Articulation is work,
and it may fail. All the people who care, cognitively, emotionally, and
politically, must articulate their position in a field constrained by a new
collective entity, made up of indigenous people and other human and
unhuman actors. Commitment and engagement, not their invalidation, in an
emerging collective are the conditions of joining knowledge- producing and
worldbuilding practices.” (Haraway – 1992)
36
It is precisely because she cares, where the “Ghost” does not, giving her
natural authority, by making her responsible for her intellectual progeny.
In Oshii’s sequel: “Innocence”, when the character Haraway (an obvious
homage to Donna Haraway), the cyborg coroner, relates a potted version of
Oshii’s understanding of her (Donna Haraway’s) work she says: “If you
assume differences between humans and robots are obvious… humans are
different from robots, that’s an article of faith, like black isn’t white. Its no more
helpful than the basic fact that humans aren’t machines. Unlike industrial
robots, the androids and gynoids designed as pets, weren’t designed along
utilitarian or practical models, Instead we model them on a human image, an
idealized one at that. Why are humans so obsessed with recreating
themselves?” Oshii iinsinuates that the drive to recreate one’s own image is
counterproductive reflecting the sentiments of Marshall Mcluhan when he said
accordingly “The archetypal scene of all technology is Narcissus gazing at his
own reflection”. (Mcluhan 1967), and this applies equally to Haraway, when
one considers that the function of her writing is as much an assertion of her
authority, power, beauty and knowledge, as it is a construction of remarkable
technical merit.
37
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY
1,2,5,6,
Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-
Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in The Cyber Cultures Reader
Routledge, 1990), pp.291 – 324)
7,9,10,
Masmune Shirow “Ghost in the Shell” –Kodansha – 1995
(Video)/ Mamoru Oshii “Ghost in the Shell” – Manga Entertainment - 2003
8.
The Holy Bible: Oxford University Press P.1421 Corinthians 13:11
11.
Odette Bruhl on Japanese Mythology “Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology” –
Batchworth Press –1959 - p.412
12.
Plato: Phaedrus as quoted by Erik Davies - ”TechGnosis” – Three Rivers
Press – 1998 P.23
13.
Graves Introduction to “Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology” – Batchworth
Press – 1959 –p.V
38
14, 17, 19
Donna Haraway, The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for
Inappropriate/d Others
Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, Paula A. Treichler, eds., Cultural Studies
(New York; Routledge, 1992) , pp. 295-337.
15.
Derrida “On the Name” Translated by Ian McCleod. Stanford, California, :
Standford University Press 1995 quoted by Micheal Pinsky in Future Present
“Ethics and/as Science Fiction”- Rosemont –2003 – p.128
16.
Masmune Shirow as quoted by Michael Pinsky in Future Present “Ethics
and/as Science Fiction”- Rosemont –2003 – p.129
18.
Ben Spatz: The Electronic Heart – 2001 Wesleyan University Press -
www.dvara.net/hk/eh.pdf
20.
(Video)/ Mamoru Oshii “Innocence” – Dreamworks / Manga Entertainment -
2005
21.
Marshall Mcluhan as quoted by Iona Miller, 4/2004 “History of Digital Art 101”
www.theesecondcouming.com/backgrounds.html
39
BACKGROUND READING:
Reload: Rethinking Women and Cyberculture: Edited by Mary Flanagan andAustin Booth – MIT Press – 2002
Jennifer Gonzalez “Envisioning Cyborg Bodies” – The Cybercultures reader –Routledge – 2000
Lisa Nakamura – “Cybertypes” – Routledge – 2002
Richard Metzger – “Book of Lies” – The Disinformation Company – 2004
7. Appendices
a) DVD of Ghost in the Shell
b) Cd Rom of ““How Does Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” relate to
the contemporary Cyborg myth in the popular science fiction film
“Ghost in the Shell?” – Dissertation submitted to City College Brighton /
Brighton University by Richard Boase April 2005
C) Included on the cd:
Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” and “The Promises of monsters”
Ben Spatz’z Electronic Heart
40
