ENGL 479W: Technoromanticism

Give a reading of either Blade Runner or The Sandman that connects it in a significant way to a work we have discussed earlier in the semester.

“Of all the replicants, only one, Rachel, succeeds in making the journey. She assumes a sexual identity, becomes a woman, and loves a man. . . . Rachel accepts the paternal figure and follows the path to a ‘normal’ adult, female, sexuality: she identifies her sex by first acknowledging the power of the other, the father, a man.” Comment on what it means to be a woman in either Blade Runner or The Sandman.

The floor is now open for you to develop any of the questions that you discussed in class group work.

For Haraway, what does it mean to be a Cyborg? In what ways is the Cyborg myth liberating for women?

Wollstonecraft writes: “This desire of being always women, is the very consciousness that degrades the sex” (99). What does she mean and would Haraway agree with her?

The floor is now open for comments addressing any aspect of Wollstonecraft and Haraway that you think important.

Think about the following quotation from Shelley Jackson’s “Stitch Bitch” in relation to any of the texts we have studied so far: “I don’t want to lose the self, only to strip it of its claim to naturalness, its compulsion to protect its boundaries, its obsession with wholeness and its fear of infection. I would like to invent a new kind of self which doesn’t fetishize so much, grounding itself in the dearly-loved signs and stuff of personhood, but has poise and a sense of humor, changes directions easily, sheds parts and assimilates new ones.”

Here are some ideas for a post about Patchwork Girl:

1. What is the meaning and significance of monstrosity in Patchwork Girl?

2. What does Patchwork Girl have to say about identity?

3. Elsewhere, Shelley Jackson has written: “Hypertext . . . is what literature has edited out: the feminine. (That is not to say that only women can produce it. Women have no more natural gift for the feminine than men do.)” What position does Patchwork Girl take about writing and about hypertext as a technology of writing?

4. How would you position Patchwork Girl in relation to the other versions of Frankenstein that we have discussed? Which is it closest to, and why? Which is it furthest from? Can it help us see the novel in a new light?

The floor is now open for comments addressing any aspect of Patchwork Girl that you think of as important.

The blog is open for posts comparing at least two of the movies in terms of what you see as a central issue that they address.