Cloning: A Technofeminist Narrative of Posthumanism on Tomie's Character in Anime Junji Ito Collection (2018)

Aqiilah Bilqiis Salsabiil Harahap; Sri Kusumo Habsari; Deny Tri Ardianto

doi:10.21900/j.jams.v5.1452

Authors

Aqiilah Bilqiis Salsabiil Harahap Sebelas Maret University
Sri Kusumo Habsari Sebelas Maret University
Deny Tri Ardianto Sebelas Maret University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21900/j.jams.v5.1452

Keywords:

anime , cloning, posthumanism, technofeminism, Junji Ito, Tomie, Horror, Body Horror

Abstract

This study examines the shifting meaning of subjectivity and the blurred boundaries between humans and nonhumans. Additionally, it explores the impact of technology intervention on gender, drawing from the principles of posthumanism philosophy. Cloning is one of the issues highlighted in the posthuman realm. This study seeks to examine the incorporation of posthumanism and technofeminism in the character Tomie in the anime Junji Ito Collection (2018, Itô Junji "Korekushon"), with the intention of challenging the sexualization of shôjo while remaining skeptical using the narrative analysis method. The results and findings show that Tomie presents a posthuman idea centered on her super regeneration ability and cloned creations to defy the limits of humanity. This idea also promotes elements of technofeminism that lead to the use of biotechnology related to reproduction. Nevertheless, in the end, Ito tries to invite the audience to remain critical in responding to the issue of technofeminism, both in terms of ethics and objectivity.

Author Biographies

Sri Kusumo Habsari, Sebelas Maret University

Sri Kusumo Habsari is a senior lecturer from the Postgraduate Program, at Sebelas Maret University. My research specialty is on media and cultural studies, literary studies, and Gender and Development.
Deny Tri Ardianto, Sebelas Maret University

Deny Tri Ardianto is a senior lecturer from the Postgraduate Program, at Sebelas Maret University. My research specialty is on film and media studies.

References

Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 1998.

An, So-Mi. “Study on Cruelty in the Horror Comics : Focusing on of Ito Junji.” Korean Society of Cartoon Animation Studies s23, no. 1 (2011): 19–33. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.7230/koscas.2011.23.1.019.

Bolton, Michael Sean. “Monstruous Machinery: Defining Posthuman Gothic.” Aeternum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies 1, no. 1 (2014): 1–15. https://www.academia.edu/7285481/Monstrous_Machinery_Defining_Posthuman_Gothic.

Braidotti, Rosi. “Posthuman Critical Theory.” In Critical Posthumanism and Planetary Futures, edited by Debashish Banerji and Makarand R. Paranjape, 13–32. New Delhi: Springer India, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-3637-5.

———. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013. https://library.lol/main/E90EBB76260ADE43CD1851D68A44FE5B.

Carrasco Carrasco, Rocío. “Experiencing the Posthuman: The Cinematic Clone in the 21st Century.” Revista Hélice 7, no. 1 (2021): 65–78. http://hdl.handle.net/10272/20022.

Choo, Kukhee. “Girls Return Home: Portrayal of Femininity in Popular Japanese Girls’ Manga and Anime Texts during the 1990s in Hana Yori Dango and Fruits Basket.” Women: A Cultural Review 19, no. 3 (2008): 275–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/09574040802137243.

Daliot-Bul, Michal. “Ghost in the Shell as a Cross-Cultural Franchise: From Radical Posthumanism to Human Exceptionalism.” Asian Studies Review 43, no. 3 (2019): 527–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2019.1631257.

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. 30th anniv. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

DeCook, Julia R. “A [White] Cyborg’s Manifesto: The Overwhelmingly Western Ideology Driving Technofeminist Theory.” Media, Culture and Society 43, no. 6 (2020): 1158–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443720957891.

Dumas, Raechel. The Monstrous-Feminine in Contemporary Japanese Popular Culture. East Asian Popular Culture. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. https://doi.org/10.5195/jll.2019.49.

Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004.

Ferrando, Francesca. “The Body.” In Beyond Humanism: Trans- and Posthumanism Jenseits Des Humanismus: Trans- Und Posthumanismus, edited by Robert Ranisch and Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, 213–26. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-653-05076-9.

Firestone, Shulamith. The Dialectif of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. Bantam Book, 1971.

Halberstam, Judith, and Ira Livingston. “Posthuman Bodies.” In Posthuman Bodies, edited by Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston, 1–19. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.

Handwerker, Lisa. “New Genetic Technologies and Their Impact on Women.” Gender and Development 11, no. 1 (2003): 114–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/741954261.

Harada, Kazue. “Japanese Women’s Science Fiction : Posthuman Bodies and the Representation of Gender.” Washington University in St. Louis, 2015. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/442.

Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective (1988).” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575–99. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066.

Haraway, Donna J. “A Cyborg Manifesto.” In Manifestly Haraway, 3–90. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816650477.003.0001.

———. When Species Meat. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

Harper, Susan, and Jessica Smartt Gullion. “‘Science Put Babies in My Belly’: Cybrog Mothering and Posthumanism in Orphan Black.” In Monstrous Mothers: Troubling Tropes, edited by Abigail L. Palko and Andrea O’Reilly, 63–84. Ontario: Demeter Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1vbd22k.7.

Haryanti, H, and M L Anggapuspa. “Kajian Visual Tokoh Karakter ‘Tomie Kawakami’ Dalam Manga Tomie Karya Junji Ito.” Barik 3, no. 2 (2022): 180–89. https://ejournal.unesa.ac.id/index.php/JDKV/article/view/47391%0Ahttps://ejournal.unesa.ac.id/index.php/JDKV/article/download/47391/39597.

Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies In Cybernethics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999. http://journal.um-surabaya.ac.id/index.php/JKM/article/view/2203.

Ito, Junji. “伊藤潤二傑作集 1 富江上 (Kompilasi Karya Ito Junji: Tomie Volume 1).” Ameba.jp. Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun Publication Inc., 2011. https://dokusho-ojikan.jp/shelf/series/112376/1.

———. 伊藤潤二傑作集２富江上 (Kompilasi Karya Ito Junji: Tomie Volume 2). Ameba.Jp. Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun Publication Inc., 2011. https://dokusho-ojikan.jp/reader/index.html?cid=735191.

Kass, Leon R., and James Q. Wilson. The Ethics of Human Cloning. Washington, D.C.: The AEI Press, 1998.

Khilnani, Shweta. “Embodying Horror: Corporeal, and Affective, Dread in Junji Ito’s Tomie.” In Horror Fiction in the Global South: Cultures, Narratives and Representations, edited by Ritwick Bhattacharjee and Saikat Ghosh. New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2021.

Lacko, Ivan. “Saviors, Naïfs, or Orphans? The Posthuman Condition in Literary and Cinematic Perspectives on Human Cloning.” World Literature Studies 13, no. 1 (2021): 43–54. https://doi.org/10.31577/WLS.2021.13.1.4.

Leon. “The Junji Ito Interview: A Conversation with the Creator of Uzumaki.” tumblr.com. Accessed August 5, 2023. https://vagabondedlife.tumblr.com/post/19759189727/the-junji-ito-interview-a-conversation-with-the#notes.

Maiti, Anwesha. “Identity Formation as a Site of Resistance: An Investigation into Posthuman Identities through Priya Sarukkai Chabria’s Clone.” Anudhyan: An Internetional Journal of Social Sciences (AIJSS) 6, no. 1 (2021): 17–24. https://rnlkwc.ac.in/pdf/anudhyan/volume6/Anwesha-Maiti.pdf.

Murphy, Maria. “Voicing the Clone: Laurie Anderson and Technologies of Reproduction.” Feminist Review 127, no. 1 (2021): 56–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/0141778920973023.

O’riordan, Kate. “Human Cloning in Film: Horror, Ambivalence, Hope.” Science as Culture 17, no. 2 (2008): 145–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/09505430802062919.

Ohsawa, Yuki. “The Transformed and Technological Female Body in Japanese Popular Culture.” The Japanese Journal of Animation Studies 22, no. 1 (2021): 43–54. https://doi.org/10.34370/jjas.22.1_43.

Ottuh, Peter O.O. “Feminism and Human Clonning: Towards a Defense of Women’s Selfhood.” In The Kpim of Feminism: Issues and Women Changing World, edited by George Uzoma Ukagba, Obioma Des-Obi, and Iks J. Nwankwor, 62–80. Victoria: Trafford Publishing, 2010.

Pacheco, Juan A. García, and Francisco J. López Rodríguez. “La Representación Icónica Y Narrativa De La Mujer En El Cómic Japonés Masculino: El Shounen Manga Y El Horror Manga.” Cuestiones de Género: De La Igualdad y La Diferencia, no. 7 (2012): 119–36. https://doi.org/10.18002/cg.v0i7.906.

Pearson, Wendy Gay. “Speculative Fiction and Queer Theory.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, no. March 2024 (2022): 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.1214.

Pérez, Jimena Escudero. “Sympathy for the Clone: (Post)Human Identities Enhanced by the ‘Evil Science’ Construct and Its Commodifying Practices in Contemporary Clone Fiction!” Between IV, no. 8 (2014): 1–24. http://www.between-journal.it/.

Ranisch, Robert, and Lorenz Sorgener. “Introducing Post- and Transhumanis.” In Beyond Humanism: Trans- and Posthumanism Jenseits Des Humanismus: Trans- Und Posthumanismus, edited by Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and Robert Ranisch, 7–27, 2014.

Rossetti, Êmili Adami, and Renata Loureiro Frade. “The Construction of Feminine, Technofeminism and Technological Paradox.” In Pathologies and Dysfunctions of Democracy in the Media Context, edited by João Carlos Correira and Anabela Gradim e Ricardo Morais, 2:145–58. LABCOM.IFP, 2020. https://doi.org/10.14591/aniki.v7n1.536.

Roy, Deboleena. Molecular Feminisms: Biology, Becomings, and Life in the Lab. Edited by Rebecca Herzig and Banu Subramaniam. Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada. Femnist Te. Vol. 5. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018.

Sing, Santi Ranjan. “‘We’re Modelled from Trash’: Confronting Transhumanism and Critical Posthumanism in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.” New Literaria: An International Journal of Intersciplinary Studies in Humanities 2, no. 1 (2021): 149–55. https://doi.org/10.48189/nl.2021.v02i1.016.

Stout, John C. “Game of Clones: Orphan Black’s Family Romance.” In Orphan Black: Performance, Gender, Biopolitics, edited by Andrea Goulet and Rober A. Rushing, 95–109. Bristoll: Intellect, 2018.

Tagashira, Shinobu. Junji Ito Collection. Japan: Wowow, Tokyo MX, Animax, 2018. www.gantzid.com.

Wajcman, Judy. Technofeminism. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004.

Wei, Li, and Jing-Jing Yuan. “Alienation and Existential Predicaments of Clones: Interpreting Never Let Me Go in the Context of Posthumanism.” Journal of Literature and Art Studies 9, no. 5 (2019): 455–63. https://doi.org/10.17265/2159-5836/2019.05.003.

Wolfe, Cary. What Is Posthumanism? Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. https://doi.org/10.5840/envirophil20118111.

Yan, Kai. “Posthuman Biopredicament: A Study of Biodystopia in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies 9, no. 5 (2019): 594–602. https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0905.15.