Technoppression and the Intricacies of Cyborg Flesh

In: Constellations: an international journal of critical and democratic theory, Volume 4, Issue 2, p. 229-247

Abstract

Reads Kathryn Bigelow's film, Strange Days (1995), as a provocation to thinking about the relation between cyborgian technology & democratic society at the end of the millennium. Most current commentary on technology flows toward apocalyptic or utopian visions of society; however, the film is interpreted here as a problematization of techno-oppression, defined as an authoritarian configuration of power, truth, & morality not synonymous with technology, but rather, it is conceived of as an apocalyptic use of technology. Focus is on its ideological power to morph history. While the power of techno-oppression is detailed, it is argued that it is not its technologies or techniques that are evil, but the oppressive knowledge-power relations in which they are employed. It is contended that the power techniques of techno-oppression give rise to possibilities for resistance that call for a critical cultural practice of struggles against the deployments of its power configurations. D. M. Smith