Hybrids of Mind and Body: The Forms and Freedoms of the Cyborg in Posthumanist Science Fiction

[Introduction] The Cyborg as a figure in popular culture – the body in a literal state of “human/machine symbiosis” (Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman 112) – has sometimes been conceived as a monstrous figure, as a figure of otherness, a being whose status as a hybrid has placed them into the figure of what Giorgio Agamben might refer to as “the Homo Sacer, a person [who] is simply set outside human jurisdiction without being brought into the realm of divine law” (Agamben, Sovereign Power and Bare Life 82). The Homo Sacer, in other words, is a being who has been stripped of all recognition and humanity, deserving neither the rights of a human being or any other animal, and has come to be acknowledged only as an object. Agamben further defines the life of Homo Sacer’s exclusion as “unsacrificeability and [yet] is included in the community in the form of being able to be killed” (82), meaning that Homo Sacer can be killed, but that their killing would never constitute murder, as their life has no recognizable value.