“

Kotani Mari has related this act of cannibalism on Shinji-EVA’s part to the explosion of the radically feminine, that is, to what Alice Jardine calls ‘gynesis’. Kotani describes the scene this way:


The moment electric technology becomes unavailable (his power supply cords have been cut), Shinji strongly hopes for a miracle. Thus, with the ultimate aim to defeat the enemy, Shinji very naturally but miraculously comes to feminize himself. This sequence unveils Shinji’s epiphany. The more strongly he desires a miraculous breakthrough, the more deconstructive his own sexuality becomes. Hence the abrupt explosion of fearful femininity out of Shinji’s own male subjectivity.


Despite the hyper-masculine outlines of the EVA suit and the fact that the pilot of 01 is a boy, over the course of the series in scenes such as this one the Shinji-EVA cyborg amalgam is is decisively gendered feminine: the uncontrollable, insufficiently bounded body/subjectivity that enlightened, rational modernity has sought to repress. And yet, it is in precisely these same scenes that the Shinji-EVA cyborg through some kind of hysterical crisis to overcome the limits of technology; the power cord and backup battery; to defeat the attacking angel. 


This narrative, therefore, employs both the male terror of being radically feminized through the excessive intimacy implied by the interpenetration and inter-corporation of the cyborg subject and the paradoxical hope that the one power that can finally oppose the various forces of evil is precisely the eruption of the abject femininity, permeability/penetrability; that is repressed in techno-patriarchal society. That powerful eruption can only occur, however, when the interconnection of the various cyborg elements is at its maximum. In the nineteenth episode Shinji’s synchronization rate with the suit is an inconceivable 400%, indicating that, despite the terror it provokes, the only hope for humankind is to move toward increased intimacy; permeability/penetrability; with the mechanical other.

”
—

“Sex and the Single Cyborg – Japanese Pop Culture Experiments in Subjectivity.” Originally published in Science Fiction Studies, Vol 29 (3), pages 436-452. November, 2002.

Many thanks to milenashakujo for linking me to this. If you enjoy Donna Haraway, cyborgia, psychoanalysis, and Japanese science fiction, you will love this read.

(via qmisato)

(via qmisato)

Dec. 15 2017
Via circuitbird
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