Cyborg, goddess, or magical girl/heavenly woman? Rethinking gender and technology in science education via Ghost in the Shell

ABSTRACT

In her widely cited and influential “cyborg manifesto”, Donna Haraway argues that “cyborg imagery” can provide a way out of the maze of dualisms we have used to explain our bodies and our tools to ourselves and concludes by asserting that she would rather be a cyborg than a goddess. We depart from the cyborg/goddess distinction by invoking a widely recognised archetype in Japanese popular media, namely the mahou shoujo (magical girl), who holds a dual identity as an earthly being (usually an adolescent schoolgirl) and a heavenly being (a super-powered girl/woman on a mission against sinister beings). We demonstrate that the distinctively Japanese figurations of the “magical girl” and the “heavenly woman” can generate “lines of flight” that invite Anglophone science educators to move beyond the Anglosphere’s “maze of dualisms” and science education’s regulation by dominant systems of signification. Specifically, we invite science educators to rethink representations of gender and technology (e.g. artificial intelligence, robotics) in the light of Masumune Shirou’s manga (comic/graphic novel), The Ghost in the Shell, and its adaptation in Mamouri Oshii’s similarly titled anime (animated film).

KEYWORDS:

• Anime
• cyborg
• gender
• manga
• science education

Acknowledgments

This article was written on the unceded lands of the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations (Noel and Annette) and the Wiradjuri and the Ngunnawal people of the Ngunnawal Nation (Simon). We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. We also acknowledge the invaluable advice provided by Bill Green.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Although the franchise now extends to a wide variety of manga, anime, and video games, our primary foci here are the two ‘foundational’ texts of Shirou’s 1989 manga and Oshii’s first anime.

2. The films to which Pérez refers in support of her argument were released after 2010.

3. This renders the name Motoko Kusanagi akin to an Anglophone-created character being named Jane Excalibur.

4. Coined by E. D. Hirsch (1988), ‘cultural literacy’ refers to the ability to understand and participate fluently in a given culture – in this case, the culture of science education as a multicultural, multigenerational, cross-class, and cross-disciplinary activity. If readers are not already familiar with the manga and anime to which we refer here, we recommend doing so at their earliest opportunity.

5. The significance of popular media for the practice of cultural studies is foreshadowed in one of its ‘foundational’ texts, Hall and Whannel’s (1964) The Popular Arts. Specific examples of popular media – such as the manga and anime on which we focus here – constitute the ‘empirical materials’ or ‘data’ informing the understandings that cultural studies seeks (on the terms ‘empirical materials’ and ‘data’ see Norman K. Denzin 2013, 355).

6. Alternatively, popular texts may be treated superficially, as what Catherine Hasse (2015) calls ‘a motivating fantasy’, that is, as ‘bait’ on a ‘hook’ that lures and lands learners in selected representations of canonical ‘textbook science’.

7. Although two of the authors identify as science educators their research interests are inflected in different directions, with Annette Gough foregrounding gender issues and Noel Gough privileging the functions of science/speculative fictions.

8. ACARA = Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, All further references to this source will be similarly abbtrviated.

9. Honourable exceptions can be found in the contents of Cultural Studies of Science Education (CSSE), first published in 2006, which differs from other science education journals in that it ‘examines science education as a cultural, cross-age, cross-class, and cross-disciplinary phenomenon … establishes bridges between science education and social studies of science, public understanding of science, science and human values, and science and literacy’, and publishes articles with ‘an explicit and appropriate connection with and immersion in cultural studies’. Interestingly, given Continuum’s history and affiliation with the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia, CSSE was co-founded by an Australian (Kenneth Tobin) and it is now co-edited by an Australian (Catherine Milne), with six Australians on the editorial board https://www.springer.com/journal/11422

10. Sterling here is quoting from William Gibson’s (1984) novel, Neuromancer.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Annette Gough

Simon Gough completed his doctoral research in Japanese Studies in 2018. He is a contributor to, and book reviews editor for, the Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies.

Noel Gough is Professor Emeritus in the School of Education at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. His teaching, research, and publications focus on research methodology and curriculum studies, with particular reference to environmental education, science education, internationalization, and globalization. His most recent book is the edited collection Transnational Education and Curriculum Studies: International Perspectives (Routledge, 2021).

Annette Gough is Professor Emerita in the School of Education at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests span environmental, sustainability and science education, research methodologies, and posthuman and gender studies. Her most recent book is the edited collection Green Schools Globally (Springer 2020).