Catastrophic Subjects: Feminism, the Posthuman and Difference

Abstract

This article considers the question of difference in posthuman representations, through an interrogation of feminist reclamations of monstrous and cyborg forms. Through a critical analysis of the popular culture phenomenon Marilyn Manson, I pursue an alternative engagement with hybrid forms that disrupts the oppositional structuring of self/Other relations upon which a politics of identity and difference gains currency. Theories of the monstrous, Jean Baudrillard's writing on catastrophe, and digital morphing are explored to interrogate established understandings of difference within the context of a simulation culture that complicates the binaries of gender difference. Theorizing the posthuman subject as catastrophic occasions new imaginings for the subject that reside beyond the fixity of signifying practice.