Sex and the Single Cyborg: Japanese Popular Culture Experiments in Subjectivity

This paper examines two aspects of subjectivity-sexuality and singularity-that are considered fundamental to a modernist notion of the person. These aspects of subjectivity are under siege as new technologies of reproduction challenge our understanding of sexed bodies and as, simultaneously, a postmodern world-view brings forward the multiplicity of sexual subject positions and embodied hybridity that modernist thinking sought to control or dismiss. In this time of conceptual crisis regarding subjectivity and embodiment, the popular culture media of many advanced countries have produced increasing numbers of narratives about cyborgs, those embodied amalgams of the organic and the machinic. I begin by explaining why the concepts "sexuality" and "singularity" are so important in this context, and why Japanese popular culture is a particularly fruitful ground for exploration of cyborg subjectivities. Then I discuss two recent anime narratives-Shinseiki Evangelion (1995-96, Neon Genesis Evangelion) and K6kaku kid6tai (1995, Ghost in the Shelf)-in terms of their depictions of specific aspects of sexuality and as the nexus of contemporary fears or desires regarding subjectivity that is being negotiated through those depictions. I conclude with observations about what these narratives reveal about new, postmodern conceptions of subjectivity.