Bodies of technology

The interface between technology and human bodies has often been lauded by feminists and critical theorists, within international politics, as potentially emancipatory. Specifically, feminists have theorized how the interface between technology and gendered bodies has had the effect of disturbing the constructs of femininity and masculinity. This article explores how the constitution of the cyborg soldier within the military, rather than displacing and disturbing gender, reinscripts gender onto bodies of technology revealing gender as socially constituted, while simultaneously concealing this through representations of technology's supposed 'neutralness'. Moreover, the constitution of the cyborg soldier through militarized techno-scientific discourses represents the desire to transcend the bodily limits of the human soldier. Even as the cyborg represents a post-human move in its instantiation, it remains within the rhetorical frame of modern humanism wherein the shift continues to signify a desire to protect specific sentient bodies and a particular kind of humanity/humanness. Finally, this article explores the ethical possibilities of the interface through the Levinasian encounter with the Other constituted in the production of the Self. © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd.