Shelley Jacksons’s Gender Politics in Patchwork Girl (1995): a Cyborg Approach

As a complex fragmented and “syncopated” hypertext, Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson interpellates its reader to place hze in the position of multiple, interconnected subject whose task is to piece together the creature in and of the text, through the physical action of clicking on the hyperlinks....

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Autor principal:	Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournès
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN FR
Publicado:	Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte" 2021
Materias:	hypertext female body cyborg performance performativity fragmentation American literature PS1-3576 English literature PR1-9680
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/ccaee51949a44c98b6d7e3ad7d89284d
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id	oai:doaj.org-article:ccaee51949a44c98b6d7e3ad7d89284d
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:ccaee51949a44c98b6d7e3ad7d89284d2021-12-02T11:27:53ZShelley Jacksons’s Gender Politics in Patchwork Girl (1995): a Cyborg Approach1272-38191969-630210.4000/sillagescritiques.11220https://doaj.org/article/ccaee51949a44c98b6d7e3ad7d89284d2021-10-01T00:00:00Zhttp://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/11220https://doaj.org/toc/1272-3819https://doaj.org/toc/1969-6302As a complex fragmented and “syncopated” hypertext, Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson interpellates its reader to place hze in the position of multiple, interconnected subject whose task is to piece together the creature in and of the text, through the physical action of clicking on the hyperlinks. Piecing the female body and the body of the text together in order to read “herstory” forces the reader to adopt a position that ceases to be one of mastery and domination traditionally associated with the reading of print fiction. Rather, Patchwork Girl prompts the reader into adopting a gaze that is “modular and fragmentary” and facilitates her active participation in the textual criticity inherent in the rhizomatic form of the hypertext. By appealing to the reader’s demiurgic powers of imagination, the hypertext replaces the identity paradigm with the performance paradigm. The patched body of the monstrous female serves as a powerful metaphor for the hypertext itself and its capacity as a “feminine form” (Jackson) to deconstruct the binaries and boundaries introduced by modern science at the service of male hybris, which Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, one of the key intertexts of Patchwork Girl, forcefully denounced. Thanks to its paradoxical materiality, the hypertext equates the female creature’s body with the monstrous form generating it. Thus, the technological medium makes it possible for Jackson to graft the text as body onto the body as text to deconstruct the logic of male-dominated technocapitalism. Engaging with the hypertext implies for the reader the letting go of the binaries (text/body, text/sex, text/technology) structuring traditional reading. Thus Patchwork Girl sollicits a “cyborg” approach (Hayles) which welcomes and performs multiple, hybrid forms of interconnectedness allowing for the creation of new subjective modalities in and of the text.Anne-Laure Fortin-TournèsCentre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte"articlehypertextfemale bodycyborgperformanceperformativityfragmentationAmerican literaturePS1-3576English literaturePR1-9680ENFRSillages Critiques, Vol 30 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN FR
topic	hypertext female body cyborg performance performativity fragmentation American literature PS1-3576 English literature PR1-9680
spellingShingle	hypertext female body cyborg performance performativity fragmentation American literature PS1-3576 English literature PR1-9680 Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournès Shelley Jacksons’s Gender Politics in Patchwork Girl (1995): a Cyborg Approach
description	As a complex fragmented and “syncopated” hypertext, Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson interpellates its reader to place hze in the position of multiple, interconnected subject whose task is to piece together the creature in and of the text, through the physical action of clicking on the hyperlinks. Piecing the female body and the body of the text together in order to read “herstory” forces the reader to adopt a position that ceases to be one of mastery and domination traditionally associated with the reading of print fiction. Rather, Patchwork Girl prompts the reader into adopting a gaze that is “modular and fragmentary” and facilitates her active participation in the textual criticity inherent in the rhizomatic form of the hypertext. By appealing to the reader’s demiurgic powers of imagination, the hypertext replaces the identity paradigm with the performance paradigm. The patched body of the monstrous female serves as a powerful metaphor for the hypertext itself and its capacity as a “feminine form” (Jackson) to deconstruct the binaries and boundaries introduced by modern science at the service of male hybris, which Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, one of the key intertexts of Patchwork Girl, forcefully denounced. Thanks to its paradoxical materiality, the hypertext equates the female creature’s body with the monstrous form generating it. Thus, the technological medium makes it possible for Jackson to graft the text as body onto the body as text to deconstruct the logic of male-dominated technocapitalism. Engaging with the hypertext implies for the reader the letting go of the binaries (text/body, text/sex, text/technology) structuring traditional reading. Thus Patchwork Girl sollicits a “cyborg” approach (Hayles) which welcomes and performs multiple, hybrid forms of interconnectedness allowing for the creation of new subjective modalities in and of the text.
format	article
author	Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournès
author_facet	Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournès
author_sort	Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournès
title	Shelley Jacksons’s Gender Politics in Patchwork Girl (1995): a Cyborg Approach
title_short	Shelley Jacksons’s Gender Politics in Patchwork Girl (1995): a Cyborg Approach
title_full	Shelley Jacksons’s Gender Politics in Patchwork Girl (1995): a Cyborg Approach
title_fullStr	Shelley Jacksons’s Gender Politics in Patchwork Girl (1995): a Cyborg Approach
title_full_unstemmed	Shelley Jacksons’s Gender Politics in Patchwork Girl (1995): a Cyborg Approach
title_sort	shelley jacksons’s gender politics in patchwork girl (1995): a cyborg approach
publisher	Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte"
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/ccaee51949a44c98b6d7e3ad7d89284d
work_keys_str_mv	AT annelaurefortintournes shelleyjacksonssgenderpoliticsinpatchworkgirl1995acyborgapproach
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Shelley Jacksons’s Gender Politics in Patchwork Girl (1995): a Cyborg Approach

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