ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Agamben’s concept of the paradigm, which is made up of oppositions, such as self and other, subject and object, which are “suspended”: this means that no two opposing elements are truly opposing but rather bleed into one another and are located somewhere between the categories to which they are imagined to belong. Drawing on the work of Donna Haraway, Lisa Yaszek, Sadie Plant and Anne Balsamo’s work, this chapter explores how the gynoid exposes the “suspended” nature of womanhood and gender identity by complicating the relationship between user and used. Exploring the iconic, post-human, female cyborg character Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager, the chapter examines how the augmented body of the gynoid fully integrated with the “tools” she uses, challenging notions of bodily integrity and the binary of subject and object. This chapter also explores Gilles Deleuze’s concept of “assemblages” – which describe social, political and physical institutions and/or concepts – as well as the idea of “becoming-woman”: this is a process by which women’s being in the world alters the “assemblages” around her and reorders them in a potentially emancipatory manner that challenges normative structures. Building on this idea, the chapter introduces a new term, “becoming-gynoid,” which describes the ways in which gynoid figures similarly alter the assemblages around them but potentially in more subversive ways. The gynoid is set apart from traditional heteronormative relationships because she challenges the boundaries between human and machine as well as male and female.
