Investigating Subjectivity in 'the Cyborg': Posthumanism Offered in Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell

Abstract

In an effort to expand the field of realization for the feminist potentials laden in understanding ‘identity’ and ‘subjectivity’ through Haraway’s metaphoric construct of ‘the cyborg’, this thesis offers cyberpunk imagination as another field of production of this figure. In order to do so, it offers new materialism as a way of reading and criticizing practice which helps recognize the elements in Japanese cyberpunk as that which helps form a posthumanist approach on notions of ‘identity’, ‘subjectivity’, and ‘agency’. In this regard, the female cyborg figure of the movie Ghost in the Shell (1995) by Mamoru Oshii will be analyzed with a keen eye on her performances which subvert the static attributions on the notions of ‘human’, ‘technology’ and ‘femininity’.