He, you and it

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He, She and It is a 1991 science fiction novel by Marge Piercy .

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Marge Piercy's He, She and It is a science fiction novel set in the not-too-distant future. After the "Fortnightly War of 2017", in which Israel and large parts of the Middle East disappeared forever from the map due to a terrorist atomic bomb attack, a new world order is emerging. A world, or rather what is left of it after all the devastating consequences, that is divided and run by 23 global corporations, so-called multinationals. All of these multinationals live under their own huge protective domes. Domes that enable life on earth without the ozone layer as well as in the outer hemisphere . But every multi differs in its laws and its life course.

Shira, the protagonist of the story, initially lives in Yakamura stitches, or YS for short, and the story begins with her divorce, in which she loses custody of Ari, her kindergarten-aged son, to her ex-husband due to corporate calculations. Humiliated and horrified, she goes to see her grandmother Malkah, who lives in a small settlement called Tikva, which is independent of the multinationals. There she should not only relax, but also work with Avram Stein, the father of her childhood sweetheart Gadi, and together with her grandmother on a secret project.

Jod, as the "project" is called, is an illegal cyborg that can hardly be distinguished from humans . It was developed by Avram and co-programmed by Malkah. In the strictest secrecy, Shira is now supposed to teach Jod to behave humanly so that he can protect Tikva from information pirates, both physically and online in the "network".

The “net” is a further development of today's Internet and allows people in the individual multinationals and independent settlements to communicate with one another and to exchange information. All those involved interlink with their minds and thus reproduce themselves as an electronic image in the world of the web. Because of this physical connection, it is also possible to suffer brain damage or even death if you are attacked online.

This is exactly why iodine was developed, which can protect Tikva and Shira with almost no signs of fatigue. But while Shira gradually falls in love with iodine, who has become more compassionate than many people, the first attacks on Tikva begin. YS has found out about the secret cyborg project and now wants to get hold of iodine through Shira, whom he pressures through Ari.

But Shira, who now rushes to help her unfamiliar mother Riva and a female cyborg named Nili, who is more human than machine, fights against YS.

She even succeeds in a daring action with iodine to free Ari from the clutches of YS. But shortly afterwards it becomes known in Tikva who iodine actually is, and a vote should be taken on whether iodine is a machine or a regular resident of Tikva who should enjoy the same rights as everyone else. Before that happens, Avram decides to hand over iodine to YS, but not without self-interest. As soon as he is introduced to the leadership of YS, Jod is supposed to blow himself up, while Riva and allies also launch an attack against YS.

Jod obeys, but as a compassionate cyborg he also decides to destroy any information that could be used to reproduce himself, and so he blows up Avram's laboratory and Avram himself.

Shira, who is deeply shocked by all this, also decides to accept Jod's will and from now on lives with Ari in Malkah's house, while Malkah and Nili left for the remnants of Israel to undergo an eye operation.

A second story is woven into the main strand of the novel: Malkah tells the cyborg Jod the 16th century story of the Golem of Prague. Rabbi Judah Löw , head of the large Jewish community in Prague (an ancestor of Malkah in Piercy's novel), forms a human-like figure out of clay. Brought to life by a kabbalistic ritual, the golem has the task of averting impending disaster from the residents of the ghetto. Piercy's artfully interwoven with the main narrative comments and illuminates the action-packed main story, and gives the novel an additional, historical-philosophical dimension.

characters

  • Shira: mother of Ari. Technically well-versed, careful about love affairs since her disappointed childhood sweetheart with Gadi. Jod finds him the perfect "man" and father for Ari.
  • Malkah: Shira's grandmother, who had a busy sex life, is primarily responsible for Jod's emotional programming. Physically battered, but still very fit mentally. Has a close relationship of trust with Shira, as she always took on Riva's mother role.
  • Jod: Avram's first successful “male” cyborg who was created for defense, but has a human-like conscience and social behavior to avoid incidents through stubborn obedience to orders. Has had his first love experiences with Malkah, but since Shira's return to Tikva he has had a monogamous relationship with Shira. Commits ordered suicide.
  • Avram: 'Creator' of iodine. Always sees iodine as property, and treats iodine as a machine regardless of its human behavior. Since the death of his wife he has shown no more sexual desire and only works, although Malkah sometimes gets quite close to him. Dies from iodine.
  • Gadi: Avram's son who never lived up to his father's expectations. Shira's great childhood sweetheart, who only got over him through iodine. Lives on the creation of emotional illusions called "voice", a kind of recognized drug, as well as holograms. Never got over Shira, although it was his desire for freedom that made him leave Shira. Had a brief relationship with Nili.
  • Riva: Shira's mother, who earns a living as an information pirate and never had a relationship with Shira. Has a sexual relationship with Nili and helps protect Tikva and Shira.
  • Nili: A woman with a lot of cyborg skills. Comes from an impossible underground settlement in Israel. Since only women live there, men are real "aliens" for them. Her first sexual experience with men was with Gadi. Helps Tikva defend.
  • Ari: Shira's son.
  • Lazarrus: A friend of Riva who lives in a Glop, an unprotected area ruled by gangs, and is the leader of a resistance group. Helps fight YS.

He, She, and It in relation to Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto

There are two types of cyborgs in Er, Sie, and There , each of which creates different expectations and fears in the population.

Iodine was created as a machine and social skills were programmed into it. He has his own conscience, desires and even beginnings of feelings. As a result, he always comes into conflict with his creator, because if he feels and thinks, does he still belong to his creator? Is it still a machine that can be switched off, or is it already an autonomous being that can enjoy the same freedoms as every other person? Shira is also not entirely sure about this, but in the end she lets all doubts fall and trusts iodine more than anyone. She even sees him as the better person. But when Tikva's population gets wind of it, fear arises. They are afraid of iodine because they don't like it. For them he is unpredictable and, above all, physically superior. Though he devotes all his time and energy to protecting Tikva, he dies before Tikva can make a decision about him.

Nili is the opposite of iodine. Due to the nuclear destruction of Israel, those who remained were only able to secure their survival with genetic engineering and cyborg technology. Nili is a genetically engineered human with machine skills. She is always seen as a person, because she has only been "improved" and also has real genes. Although she sometimes behaves more inhumanly than Jod, there is never a discussion about her within Shira's family. Even Gadi, who mocks Jod and makes fun of him, has no qualms about entering into a sexual relationship with Nili. But when he realizes that she has a will of her own and, despite her cyborg skills, is not something that belongs to him, this relationship falls apart again.

But the rest of them are no longer just human. As in the Cyborg Manifesto, the boundaries between machine and human are very blurred in the time of the novel. In YS, the external change towards the common ideal of beauty through operations is a matter of course. Those who can afford it become clones of the ideal, but also in Tikva and in the rest of the world there is no longer a person who does not have a part of a machine in himself or who does not get new organs to continue living or to circumvent old age . However, none of these people would call themselves cyborgs.

From how much one is still human or from when one is already a machine is not clarified, the boundary is blurred and cannot be exactly determined.

literature

further reading

  • Donna Haraway : A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. In: Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York 1991, pp. 149–181 http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html ( Memento from February 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  • Donna Haraway (translated by Fred Wolf): A Manifesto for Cyborgs. Feminism in dispute with the technosciences . In: Carmen Hammer and Immanuel Stiess (eds.): The reinvention of nature. Primates, cyborgs and women . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / M. and New York 1995, ISBN 3-593-35241-9 , pp. 33-72.
  • Dunja M. Mohr (2004) Cyborg and Cyb (hu) man: The Fine Line of Difference . In: Helene Von Oldenburg and Andrea Sick : Virtual Minds: Congress of Fictitious Figures . Thealit , Bremen 2004, ISBN 3-930924-05-6 , pp. 120–33.
  • Dagmar Fink: I read cyborg, I read queer . In: Anna Babka and Susanne Hochreiter (eds.): Queer Reading in the Philologies . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlag, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89971-387-9 , pp. 157-170.

See also