Aliens R Us

The Other in Science Fiction Cinema

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EDITED BY ZIAUDDIN SARDAR AND SEAN CUBITT § % T\ %\

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 Star Trek: First Comtict 75

officer Reiker, played by Jonathan Frakes, also director of this epic,

4 Star Trek: First Contact: and Jordie, the engineer with cybernetic eyes, are COOINE over this
The Hybrid, the Whore artefact, touching it in awe like two little boys wanking a giant
collective member. The counsellor, Deana Troy, walks in on them
and the Machine and excuses herself with the question, ‘Would you three like 10 be
alone? This theme of the ‘real’ man is a constant refrain in a movie
that, at least in its main storyline, is utterly predictable. The Borg
Christine Wertheim die. The Enterprise wins. History reasserts itself. Flyboy takes his
spaceship up. The aliens recognise that we are no longer sO uninter-
They descend to Earth, They wear druidic
estingly ‘primitive’.
Picard, captain of the Enterprise. lies dreaming: embedded in a a
costumes. They have pointy ears. They make First Contact. And
gigantic matrix that weds flesh and technology in a radical synthesis ty
new era of peace, love and Space Federation dawns, as all humani
known as The Borg. It is “definitely not Swedish’. the
is suddenly united in the realisation that ‘they are not alone in
‘Six years ago they assimilated me. They had their cybernetic it is more
universe’. If the history of humanity is anything to go by,
devices implanted throughout my body. | was linked to the hive the
likely we'd unite round our common sense of difference from
mind. Every trace of my individuality eradicated. | was one of them But
aliens and treat them as invading others, not friendly brothers. this
... | can hear them.' of
this is Star Trek, not George Orwell. However, if the basic plot
Flash of alien face: skin glistening wet. A transparent membrane satistving,
of indescribable delicacy. Veins throb blue under alabaster whiteness. saga is as dull as dishwater, two things make it thoroughly
they/it
Glossy lips purr sensuously red. ‘How could you forget me so the Borg enemy, and the subsidiary storyline in which
quickly? The whisper slides over him like liquid silk. “We were so capture Data, the android equivalent of Spock in the Next Generation.
s interest in
close you and L' I shall discuss the Borg first, before examining their/it
But | get ahead of mysell. the android.
Back in the present, Earth looms into view on the screen of the THE BORG: THE OTHER AS (THE) UNCATEGORISABLE
Entevprise. “Atmosphere: methane, carbon monoxide, fluorine. bad guys
Population approximately 9 billion. All of them Borg.” Determined The Borg, ‘man’s deadliest enemy’ and the best Star Trek
are a synthesis
to assimilate all species to their collective, the Borg have created a ever, as entertaining as Q and infinitely more deadly,
n of insect-
temporal vortex and travelled back in time to absorb humanity of every cliché about the Other: a complex (con)fusio
each will is
before it develops warp drive. The task for the Enterprise is to prevent virus-commie-machine, with a hive mentality in which
universe. The
this disaster by following the Borg back to the past. absorbed into the collective drive to “assimilate’ the
so much kill
The main plotline of First Contact, the 1997 Star Trek: The Next most frightening aspect of the Borg is that they do not
whao's been
Cemeration movie, is neither interesting nor original. Humanity must their enemies as absorh them. ‘If you see a crew member
hesitate to fire.
develop faster than light flight because only this is significant assimilated,” asserts Picard at one stage, ‘do not
Believe me, you'll be doing them a favour.” Better dead than red. The
enough to attract the attention of aliens and encourage them to
means by which the Borg effect this miraculous assimilation is not
make First Contact, paving the way for our entry into the Space
Federation. The crucial date is 5 April 2063, when one Zephram brainwashing, but implants. Once they've got a body they proceed
to invade it, inserting their cybernetic devices Into every orifice,
Cochrane makes the first such flight. It is he and his ship which must
body, this penetra-
be protected in a story that is half Terminator, half The RightStuff, for possessing it from within. This invasion of the
to a Western mind
Cochrane is modelled on Chuck Yaeger, not spam in a can, but a tion of self by other is what makes the Borg,
te distinction
‘real’ man who flies a real ship, all thrusting phallus with rock 'n’ raised on the credos of individualism and an absolu
so Other.
roll blaring over the intercom. There is a lovely scene where the first between self and other(s) so suspect, so alien,

74
 76 Aliens R Us Star Trek: First Contoct 77

Are they/it one or many? Singular or collective? They/it blur the cultures, especially Muslims in their current incarnation. This
boundaries between every category of being, singular/plural fantasy is both a misrepresentation and absurd, for it opposes
{nlmnw.flnammatr. insect/animal, disease/host, hununmuchlnr: ‘individual’ to 'society’ as if it were a simple matter of the one or the
dis-
For they/it constitute a heterogeneous dis-unity in which the main other. Indeed, one could argue that this fantasy of exclusive
uality
characteristics are a radical Auidity and an absolute lack of discretion junction in which there is an absolute choice between individ
between identities because, instead of a separation between discrete and sociality, with no possibility of having both simultaneously, is
selves and categories there is what de Sade called ‘a universal prosti- the ultimate ideological weapon of capitalism, triumphant over
tution of all beings".! Indeed, in many ways the Borg are the democracy as much as it is over socialism.
inheritor/s of de Sade's transgressive fantasies whose philosophical In reality, in all cultures the individual subject comes into being
point is to urge a “transgression of the limits separating sell from
through a complex set of soclal relations which ontologically and
of
epistemologically precede it, and the shifts in the constitution
other, man from woman, human from animal, organic from
inorganic’* What could be more transgressive of the limits by
that totality known as society are always at least partially effected
separating selt from other than the Borg, when their whole muosdis the personal intentions of its subjects, The problem for people raised
uprr;ul:fl Is to absorb thelr enemies, not so they may cease to be, # but we cannot
in a Western-style society, wherever this be located, is that
“

: |: ;1: I;:I: G::L:Lur;?uu can be added to the gradually evolving totality and
accept any parameters whereby the relations between individual
When we
society are negotiated in ways other than our own.
It Is this fear of absorption into another, rather than possession that these
by it, that makes the Borg so frightening, for at least in possession encounter such differences we automatically assume
our maost
though one is turned into an object, one still has a sense of r.Ila-l others have no concept of the individual at all. As this is
uals
creteness, of a self that is separable from others. In the case of valorised idea, notwithstanding the fact that only some individ
projected
absorption one loses even this, as one is incorporated into, and are really valued in our social structure, not all, our
Of course
becomes a part of a greater whole. To a creature like 7 of 9, thv.: Borg perception of their ‘lack of individuality’ scares us to death.
ion to this
flrllf.'lll-t" captured and forcibly disconnected from the hive in the there is to the Western mind a ‘real’ physiological foundat
for, or even
Viwager series, this is a noble position as one takes part in somethin view that the Borg/Asian/communist other has no regard
whereas ‘we’ are
greater than oneself, But she wouldn’t know any better because sh: concept of, the individual. They all look the same,
was assimilated as a child. To fully grown adult minds (from a each clearly different.
even leaving
modern Western culture), this proposition Is utterly abhorrent in its But the Borg offer another take on this matter, for
to the people of
implication that one is merely a part, not (a) whole in oneself, as if aside the possibility that all Caucasians look alike
people in
being a part of something greater than oneself reduced one’s ;seli - other races, or that, as Andy Warhol famously said,
soclalist coun-
fnlpurlince as an individual. But this is the problem for the capitalist societies often look more alike than their
to look alike, or
Western' mind, which may now be found in many non-Western terparts,* there is the question of what it means
Borg in this context,
geographical locations, ! because in Western-style societies the ‘social even to be alike. What is interesting about the
Sade, Is that the
contract” has been reduced to a competition in which whfirwr and another point they have in common with de
does not produce
doesn’t definitively come out on top must be seen as having ‘lost’ assimilation of different beings to the collective
same. It produces a
there being no principle of co-operation by which the whul:: a dull homogeneity in which all become the
share in the real
collective could be seen as gaining sim ultaneously. radical heterogeneity in which every being gets to
the reason “indi-
In this sense the Borg represent the opposite of the Thatcher differences of all the others. From this perspective,
the Borg collective is
principle. Where the prime minister thought there was no societ viduals’, in our sense, cannot be identified in
of the same, but
only individuals, to our eyes the Borg appear to have only Hn:lflh not that they have all been reduced to an order
so many different
and no individuals. They/it are the embodiment of the Wmttr: that the collective as a whole has absorbed
it has become 100
fantasy of communism/socialism, as well as virtually all Asian aspects from so many different species that
 T8 Aliens R Us Siar Trek: First Comtiet 79

complex to categorise, and so too complex to be partitioned in the

fantasy is to break down or transgress the cultural frameworks by
ways we are used to.
which we habitually make sense of the world. As Rosemary Jackson
In this sense the Borg are like the great hybrid figures of Bosch’s
savs in her excellent introduction to the topic Funtasy: The Literature
Garden of Earthly Delights, figures that are such a complex fusion of
of Subversion, ‘[plresenting that which cannot be, but is, fantasy
building, insect, instrument, animal, plant, human, machine and
exposes a culture’s definitions of that which can be: it traces the
costume, it is as impossible to say what each is or is not, as it is to say
limits of its epistemological and ontological frame’. This is precisely
where one starts and another begins. And vet, the whole world
the de Sade-Bataille project, to expose the limits of our social
composed of these strange hybrids is infinitely more diverse,
ordering systems by transgressing them, not so much to bring order
complex and fascinating than the easily categorised and individu-
down, as to open it out to critique. From this perspective the Borg
ated world of our everyday lives. To de Sade, this state of radically
offer viewers an opportunity for the sort of genuinely critical self-
shared heterogeneity, of perpetual metamorphosis in which there
reflection that is prohibited by the repressed and narcissistic
are no fixed identities only a constant translation of one form or
conformism of the Enterprise and the Space Federation. This is the
body into another, substitutes for God. It is the primordial reality to
value of all ‘Others’, that through their very difference they enable us
which he would love to return, for in his materialist atheism all
to see ourselves more clearly, because in not reflecting us they enable
social order, ethics, morality and institutionalised activity are seen as
us to see ourselves from the outside.
‘unnatural” constructs imposed upon a natural disorder.’ From a
But, if the Borg as a totality are fascinating, their Queen s even
Freudian perspective, the attraction of this state is that it recapitu- of
lates the original polymorphous sexuality we all experienced prior to more so, for She is The Borg, It is also her capture and seduction
Data that constitutes the subsidiary, and by far the more interesting
the limitations imposed by our entry into the social order. It is a state
storyline of this saga.
in which the veil of repression is lifted 1o reveal the original fluidity
we lost in being subjected to ‘castration’, that process which consti- THE OTHER STORY: THE MAKING OF A 'REAL" MAN
tutes us as individuated ‘subjects’ positioned In a social order
‘Are you ready?’ a silky voice purrs through the ether.
precisely by separating and distinguishing us from our ‘objects’. For
Data lies prone on a table, head encircled by a halo of green light.
de Sade, though neither the ‘I' nor any distinguishable ‘object’ can an
He has been captured by the Borg, and their Queen |s taking
be said to ‘exist’ in this state, it is this, not social order, which con- inter-
interest in him. | would too if | were Her, he is by far the mast
stitutes true reality.® Nearly 200 years later, the French writer Georges both curiou s
esting member of the Enterprise. "Who are you?' he asks,
Bataille came to the same conclusion in his concepts of ‘base ma-
and polite.
terialism’, the informe and ‘heterology’,”
‘1 am The Borg.’
It is because they/it evoke this desire to return to a more
A beautiful torso floats into view at the top of the screen, face
primordial, un-self-conscious state that makes the Borg so ruby red,
thoroughly fascinating to us the viewers, But it is what makes them perfectly chiselled, forehead high, skin radiant white, lips
guide it
shoulders bare. It is held by a network of thin tubes that
repellent to minds like those of the Enterprise who come from a a
culture so perfectly conformist, so thoroughly repressed, it makes across the space in a gently arcing curve. From iis underside
gleaming red tail flexes. Half-spine. Half-phallus. All bio-techno-
every one of them, in their prissy self-righteous individualism,
logical.
absolutely the same. Just as in Bosch’s work we lave the hybrids from a collective
“That is a contradiction’, Data counters, “The Borg have
hell more than the well-categorised creatures of Eden, cute as these
consclousness. There are no individuals.’
are, so in Star Trek we love the complex Borg more than the replies
‘I am the beginning, the end, the one who is many’, she
simplistic individuals who make up the Enterprise crew. It is an inter-
calmly.
esting fact of many fantastic artworks that the ‘bad’ guys are the ones grey skin m“.““"
The torso is lowered into its casing, a gunmetal
universally loved, while the good guys are loathed, for these, like The
Enterprise crew, are just too conformist, when the whole purpose of
the a body that is halt well-cut muscle, hall electronic implants.
as the bionic
head shifts into place, and She utters a sigh of pleasure
BO Aliens R Lis Star Treke First Comtact 81

‘buttons’ round her décolletage lock top and bottom together in a ‘It appears as il you are trying 1o graft organic skin on o my
chain of bio-technology that looks like an claborate piece of costume endoskeletal structure’, he answers correctly.
jewellery. In fact, the overall effect is of a high-tech Elizabeth |, for “What a cold description for such a beautiful gift’, She replies.
with Her dazzlingly white skin, high forehead and off the shoulder Then, adopting Her most beatific smile vet, She bends Her beautiful
costume The Borg is every inch a Queen. (Somehow only capitals a
head and, pursing Her lips, blows lightly on t/his skin. It is
haunting image, this combination of shivering skin and bionic
will do for this magnificent creature.)
S0 begins the other storyline of the film, where, instead of a
circuitry turmed on by the touch of a woman's lips. For whatever else
typical bang-‘em-up-and-shoot-"em saga, we are given a complex
The Borg may be, She is all woman, right down to Her treacherous
story of interpersonal relations in which the question of what it is 1o
desire which does not balk at preying on men’s needs in order to
be human is deftly interwoven with an exploration of sexuality and
satisfy Her own demands.
gender. Indeed, what is most impressive is the way this plotline
‘Was that good for you? She whispers, as Data splutters, smiling,
shows how these two issues are inseparable; that to be a human either
subject is to be a sexed subject. The specific ‘subject’ around which confused, delighted, embarrassed. Never has he felt so human,
to us, or to himself,
these gquestions turm is Data, the mani{made)-info-machine, whose Data still
On returning to this scene some time later we find
problem is that he's never sure if he is ‘really’ experiencing anvthing
of just processing inputs that can be categorised in a certain way. It prisoner, as a Borg drone carefully sews the new organic skin in place
best
is through his capture by the Borg Queen that Data finally experi- and locks his arm back up. He is chattering away, in his
ences the real sensations he has so long craved. And, in representing nonchalant, rationalistic, I'm-not-emotionally-affected manner,
to the
this encounter, the film raises many questions concerning Data’s quizzing the Borg about what they are doing to him, reverting
another
position as a "subject’, or lack thereof, and what it is to be an Other, certainties of science in a desperate attempt to stave off
hed
both the other of humanity, and the other in a sexual relationship. encounter with the ‘real’, even though that is his most cheris
loses
For, whatever the relation between Data and the Queen, it is defin- desire. This completely exasperates The Borg and She finally
chean to the
itively sexual. The ultimate irony of this film is that the sexiest her roval cool. They argue about perfection, She, Nietzs
biological
encounter the Star Trek saga has known comes between an android core, trying to convince him that the synthetic mixture of
and a ... well, what exactly is the Borg Queen? But we shall deal with organism and technological invention is superior to the merely
he is. Data
Her shortly. For now, let us examine how their relationship evolves. human, or, for that matter, the purely machinic, as
is to become
The encounter begins well. The Queen Is courteous and magis- refuses 1o be swayed, despite the fact that his whole aim
clearly derived
terial, if enigmatic. Data is his usual polite, perky self. (Being an more human, more organic. Given the pleasure he so
program to
android, Data doesn’t have to go into that boring how-dare-you- from the previous scene, wWe can only assume that his
desire for real
degrade-my-dignity routine that Picard feels compelled to perform protect the Enterprise overrides his more personal
are more
every time he is tied up by a woman.) They banter a while, politely, physical sensation. But The Borg knows that actions
s the clasp
Data trying to figure out the contradiction represented by this convincing than words. So instead of arguing, She unlock
on, human
unique Borg Queen, She tryving to convince him of the virtues of the on his arm, again offering him sensation, bodily sensati
of sense he has had
Borg way of life, for She wants Data to add his uniqueness to the sensation, not the shallow electronic simulations
time to prq'.-aul-
collective’s heterogeneity. Unable to imagine the pleasures such a to make do with until now. However, Data has had
Her ‘stimulations
state could potentially bring, Data resists. However the Queen is wise for this encounter and springs into action before
of pleasure
and has powers beyond his wildest dreams. So instead of trying to can subvert his programmed goals. Consequently, instead
h his newly
reason with him She unclasps the cuff pinning his arm 1o reveal a he receives pain, as a defending drone slashes throug
l feelings and
few square inches of skin suspended above a bionic net of wires and grown skin. This brings him to a halt, his persona
clutches his arm in
blinking lights, sensations at last overriding his programs, as he
‘Do you know what this is, Data? She purrs. pain and confusion.
H: Aliens RLls Star Teoks Fiest Contact B3

An interesting philosophical point is made here: that the essence supporter to the two white male heroes, Picard and Flyboy. We must
of being human is not certainty, but confusion, for it is only when wait for the later Deep Space Nine series to get a bla manckas hero
Data is lorced into a state of confusion, when the certainties of his and star, and for the Vovager series before we have a woman as the
programs are overridden, that he at last experiences something ‘real’, central character,
something human. And precisely because She knows this, it is just Picard enters the zone the Borg have assimilated on the Enterprise,
here, when Data is at his weakest and most vulnerable, that The Borg all murky atmosphere, suffused with ‘alien’ green light and hollow
steps in for the kill. Drawing closer, eyebrows arched, She asks him, electronic growlings. The walls look like a combination of the inside
nonchalantly, almost innocently, ‘Are yvou familiar with the ... of a stomach and a Visigoth tavern decked out in gunmetal grey, the
physical forms of pleasure?” current fashion of the future in sci-fi movies. (Do all aliens really hire
Data backs away, breath coming quickly. “If you are referring to the same interior designers?) For those not in the know, Picard was
sexuality, | am fully functional, programmed in multiple once assimilated into the Borg collective, and he has harboured a
techniques.” (The mind boggles.) personal hatred for them/Her ever since. Spyving Data standing
‘How long is it since you used them? She purrs. quietly in a Borg niche, face now half covered in ‘real” organic skin,
‘Eight years, seven months, sixteen days, four minutes, twenty- he shouts at the Queen.
‘Let him go. He's not the one you want!’ Says who? Why do men
“Far too long!” She reaches forward and kisses him, then draws always think they know what a woman wants, even a Borg woman?
back slightly. This time Her stimulations completely override his ‘Are vou offering yourself to us? She is quizzical, bemused.
software, and he pounces, instantly drawing Her to him in a tight ‘Offering myself? ... That's it!" The bubble has burst. The light
embrace as the camera dissolves to another scene. We can only hope switched on. ‘] remember now’, he continues in a self-righteous rage.
that future generations of Star Trek producers will not be so shy, and ‘It wasn't enough that you assimilated me. | had to give myself freely
that the question of Data’s multiple sexual techniques will be more to The Borg. To you.'
fully explored in later episodes. “You can’t imagine the life you denied yourself’, She counters sar-
Much could be made of this little scene from a psychoanalytic per- castically.
spective, specifically that it is a classic, even literal, example of the A fight ensues and, inevitably, predictably, disappointingly, The
psychoanalytic thesis that femininity and masculinity are Borg is killed, Picard gloatingly breaking Her neck/spine/phallus/
organic
isomorphic with hysteria and obsessionality, the two principal forms source-of-power, which is now exposed as pure machine, its
the
of neurosis. For where the hysteric is overly alive and needs calming component having been burned off by poisonous fumes. All
to its
down, the obsessional is mortified and needs enlivening. What could drones are instantly deactivated, and the Enterprise is restored
ol
be more mortified than an android, or more alive than this beautiful normal state of peace and order. We can only hope the producers
Borg will
Borg? As we shall see, this theme of mortification is not unconnected the film were thinking ‘three dimensionally” and that The
this got to
with the notion of Otherness. But before we discuss that, we must return in all Her glory in future episodes. But what has all
talking
first examine the final scene in this storyline, for Data is not the only do with Otherness? Indeed, what kind of Otherness are we
isable
(obsessional) man to be seduced by our Queen. about here, for we have already examined the uncategor
at stake,
Flash to Picard. The battle is over. The Borg have fled. The Othemess of the Borg as a collective? There are two issues
revolve
Enterprise recaptured. Flyboy's erupting into the sky in his phallic- the Other as feminine, and the Other as machine. Both
Queen. The
shaped rocket, rock 'n’ roll blaring. But Data is still in the grip of the around the issue of sexuality. Both involve the Borg
Queen, and Picard ‘can hear them’. latter also involves Data. | shall deal with the former first.
‘I must save my friend’, he tells his companion, the black female
THE BORG: THE OTHER AS WOMAN AS WHORE
engineer who built the first faster-than-light craft, even if she didn’t
is part
design it. She is a sort of all-purpose PC Other, a black female As one of the collective The Borg Queen is other because She
itutes
technician who nevertheless remains permanently a sidekick, of the confusion of insect-virus-commie-machine that const
B4 Aliens
R Lis Star Trok: First Contict 85

the collective. But as The One of the collective, She is, as Data says, But what about the feminine subject? Clearly she is a problem
an outright contradiction, and a wholly different kind of other. She only if we do not have another definition of subjectivity. But this is
is the collective that is also an individual, the one who is many, the the problem of patriarchy, that it does not provide the conceptual
‘I' which is the All of the-m-others, But if an ‘I’ is of the-m-others, apparatus for defining subjectivity in other terms. Indeed, one could
then it is of an order other than the °I' that we normally associate define patriarchy as the social state in which a ‘feminine subject s
with individual subjectivity. It is an ‘other-1" which is multiplicitous excluded because subjectivity per se is defined in relation to an object
and relational, whereas, since the Enlightenment, the ‘normal’ conceptualised through the trope of “The Woman™. The challenge
subject has been seen as definitively singular, autonomous and self- for both feminism and psychoanalysis is to develop a more complex
contained. It is here that sexuality becomes an issue, and the issue view of subjectivity which, through reconceptualising the relations
of sexuality becomes entangled with the notion of Otherness, for between the subject’s | and its object(ive) Other, is able to embrace
this ‘other’ subject is clearly the feminine one. The problem is that other forms including the feminine.
femininity is definitively excluded from the notion of subjectivity if However, we do not live in the future. We live here and now, and
it is equated with the relationality of the-m-other’s function. In this in the future-now of Star Trek, a woman, even a Queen, cannot take
case, we need another way of defining femininity. But even if we a man as her object, for a man is, by definition, not an object, but a
dissociate it from child-bearing, the main characteristics of the subject. This is what makes Picard so angry in relation to The Borg:
feminine mode of being still seem to be relationality, equivocality, that She treated him as an object, demanding that he “give’ himself
splitting and a porousness of boundaries (precisely the qualities of 1o Her. (And he can't imagine the pleasure he denied himself.) The
The Borg), all of which go against the entrenched definitions of sub- problem here is not so muc thathThe Borg is/are collective, and that
says,
jectivity as founded on a fixity of meaning, a unity of identity, and in giving himself he will lose his individuality, for as he hl.'nul'fl
She
an absolute separation of self from (the-m-jothers. in his (unique) case, She did not want just anot her ‘drone’.
The problem of the feminine subject is even further complicated wanted a human being with a mind of his own, ‘a counterpart’. The
in
by the fact that she is constantly confused with that other quite problem is that She takes for herself the active pant and puts him
different entity called “The Woman®. According to the French psy- the position of passive object, the position ol non-subjective
choanalyst Jacques Lacan, “The Woman doesn't exist”. Lacan did not Otherness. The name for women who do this is ‘Whore',
mean by this that anatomically female bodies don't exist, or even A whore Is a woman who has her own desire and pursues it. She
her,
that there are no feminine subjects. He meant that the concept of is 2 woman who does not wait for men to come and proposition
them.
“The Woman' is a fantasy existing exclusively in people’s minds, a but actively goes out seeking them, stalking them, pursuing
into
fantasy that both men and women think feminine subjects should And when she finds them she seduces them, insinuating herself
a whore
conform to. In the psychic structure of the masculine mind The their affections, their minds, wearing them down. In short,
turning
Woman' is the fantasy that occupies the position of (his) object, the is a real other, a woman who upsets the ‘natural’ order by
of objects.
cause of his desire, and that around which his psycho-sexual life herself into a subject and putting men in the position
they are
revolves. In the psychic structure of the feminine mind there is a This is why all whores must die, including The Borg, for
which
problem, for she cannot take herself as object. Or can she? And if unnatural and excessive in the assertion of their own desires,
she did, what would it mean? In other words, if the masculine men. This ‘unnat-
should naturally be subordinated to the desires of
in our first
subject revolves around “The Woman' as object, at least his subjec- uralness’ is symbolically marked in a most acute manner
overhead,
tivity is clearly separable from that object. But in what sense can we view of The Borg. Remember Her torso sailing majestically
unnatural
talk about the feminine subject being separable from ‘The Woman' spinal cord dangling below. This member is not so much
phallus.
as object? This is one reason why subjectivity is seen, in patriarchal because it is clearly half machine as because it looks like a
a phalius.
society, as masculine by definition, for the patriarchal subject is The woman, whether in fantasy or fact, does not have
is ml'y a fantasy
defined in relation to an object named ‘Woman'. This is also why Indeed, in psychoanalytic theory, if ‘The woman’
is precisely
“The Woman' is other. She is the other-of-the-subject.® object, at least she is a ‘natural’ fantasy, for “The Woman'
Ris Aliens R Us Star Teek: First Confacr 87

the one who is in want of the phallus. But the woman who believes You-object’ struggle, Data is quite happy to play the object-role, for
she actually has a phallus Is not fantastical, she is an object of in this position he gets what he has always wanted, to feel like a ‘real’
derision, for she is the most deluded of all creatures. As Data says in man. Which just goes to show that these two positions are not
his argument with the Queen, “Believing yvourself to be perfect is mutually exclusive, as Picard so desperately insists on asserting, In
often the sign of a delusional mind." In being the ultimate in this sense, there is something genuinely radical in the relation
perfection, the fantasy of a woman with a phallus is also the ultimate between Data and The Borg, for in his acceptance of this role reversal
delusion, This is why The Borg must be crushed, because She behaves play in which he becomes the passive object and She the active
as if She really has a phallus. It is the man who has the phallus, not subject, he engages in a kind of sexual experimentation that, for
the woman. And it is (the bearer of) the phallus which desires. The Hollywood, Is really quite subversive, Perhaps he really has been
other is (merely) the cause of (t)his desire, its object but never its programmed with multiple techniques.
subject. As the subject’s other, its object, the woman's ‘natural’ desire But if Data can liberate himself from the constricting sexual codes
is simply 1o arouse the man's, not to have any ideas of her own. This of his culture it is because he understands that there is something
15 the reason a woman's desire should be subordinated to a man's. So much more precious than the assertion of one’s subjective position,
at last we come to the desire of a man, the only proper subject for an something other men take for granted, namely, life itsell. For it is
enduiry into Otherness. clear that Data treasures his flesh, all few square inches of it, as much
as his life, because this is the only thing he has ever known as real
DATA: THE OTHER AS MACHINE sad
life, not just a simulation of It. Thus, not only does one feel very
I'he problem is that the ‘man’ in question is Data, not a flesh-and- in the final scene where he and Picard are fighting and killing The
blood, born-of-woman man, but a manimade)-info-machine and, it Borg, one also does not quite believe it. In fact, one feels hu.-tm?red.
in a
has to be said, he handles his relations with The Borg infinitely more in the same way we were betrayed n Fatal Attraction when,
Glenn
graciously than Picard. But this is probably because Data’s problem desperate attempt o relieve us of the sympathy we felt for the
is not so much with women, as is Picard’s, but with humans. As a Close character, the makers of the film had her boil the family
movie
manimade)-info-machine it is almost irrelevant that Data is designed bunny. In other words, this is one of those cases where the
r act
to look, and programmed to behave, like a male, complete, makers lllegitimately manipulate the plot by having a characte
thing
apparently, with multiple sexual technigues although, it has to be in an unbelievable manner. (Cynics would say the whole
of
said, we are not told which role/s he is programmed to play in beggars belief, but | mean believable on its own terms, not those
these.'” But if Data’s problem is not women, neither is it the problem _
‘objective’ reality.)
up his
of a subject in relation to an object. Data does not want to possess a What is not credible here is that Data would willingly give
with
human; he wants to become one, His problem is thus not whether precious life-giving skin, for at the end of this scene he is shown
the
he is or is not a subject, or is properly recognised as one by a woman- circuitry exposed on his face and arm where he has ripped off
act itseld,
object-other. His problem is simply that, whatever he |s, his organic skin grafted by The Borg. We are not shown the
sensations are limited in relation to humans. Where they are clearly precisely because it is not believable. We are only shown its effects.
of true
aroused in all sorts of pleasant and unpleasant manners, all he ex- As Picard helps him to his feet, Data says in the hushed tone
r
perlences are inputs he can categorise as pleasure or pain. What he appreciation, ‘She was unique. She brought me closer to hum?mt}
her offer, .
never actually does is feel pleasure or pain, that is, until The Borg than I've ever been. And for a time | was tempted by
up Data’s
gives him the gift of humanity, by properly stimulating him, But it ‘How long a time?" Picard demands, callously sizing
his loss, a loss
is not Her stimulations, Her actions, that are the gift here; it is the lovalty rather than showing the slightest concern for
did.
sensory apparatus to respond to them. Picard cannot even imagine, though clearly The Borg
“and
This is what makes the relation between Data and The Borg so 0,68 seconds,” Data replies efficiently, before adding quietly,
much more interesting than that between Her and Picard. Where for an android that is nearly an eternity.’
Picard tumns everything into the typical, ‘l-must-be-on-top, l-subject, The question is: why did he do it?
 St Teok: First Contuct B9
BE Aliens R Lis

The answer, according to the logic of the plot, can only be that What is most horrific about this state is that, as one possessed, he
having real-life sensations would make him value himself above the still has his own consclousness intact. He is not in control, but he is
others he is designed o protect, those human subjects to whom all conscious of himself as a discrete individual, The point is that
his own desires must be constantly subordinated. There is a very although the state of Borgdom may appear frightening to those on
telling scene in this respect early on in the movie when, along with the outside looking in, to the ones actually experiencing it it would
others, Data and Picard are heading towards their first encounter not be nearly as horrific as the kind of possession Data has to endure.
with the Borg. Data opens the conversation with a delightiully Though as a Borg one may lose the sense ol separateness as one
childish outburst of enthusiasm over some newfound feelings. becomes mingled with the All of the-m-others, being a part of that
I believe | am feeling anxiety. It's a fascinating sensation’, he vast collective consciousness is potentially, as the Queen asserts, an
burbles, unimaginably great experience, On the other hand, though it may
PMicard is annoyed at this and responds tetchily, ‘I'm sure it's a fas- appear less unappealing 1o (Western-minded, and masculine)
cinating experience. But perhaps you should deactivate your outsiders, to those undergoing It, as so many women and colonised
emotion chip.' ‘subjects’ have attested, absolute possession by an other is living hell,
Ever obliging, Data complies, only to have Ficard mutter gra- for it places one in the position of being an absolute object, the
tultously, ‘Data, there are times | envy you.' complete opposite of a subject. The paradox here is that those placed
What is there to envy? Every one of his own pleasures must be in this position are precisely not pure objects. If they were they would
nipped in the bud, virtually before they've begun, if they even have no desires of thelr own and hence no objections. It is only
vaguely look like interfering with the demand that he place others' because those put in this position, whether women, androids or
needs before his own, ‘primitives’, are in themselves subjects that they can feel their objec-
S50 we come to the real problem with Data: why is he the true tification-in-relation-to-others as a conlinement.
Other in this plece? Data is not a subject, not a ‘person’ at all, either The problem with Data, or with his position in the symbolic order
masculine or feminine. He is a slave, reduced to the condition of a
of Star Trek: The Next Generation, 15 that the producers of this saga
living death, because he has to give up his feelings, his sensations,
want to maintain the same duplicitous fantasy that haunts psycho-
his life, in direct opposition to his own personal desires, And this is
analysis, namely that someone can be a fully (self<)conscious
not because his loyalty or sense of duty, which after all are pleasures, in
override his other desires, but because he is programmed to. Inside ‘subject’ in-relation to itself, and yet completely objectified
the
relation to other, more ‘real’ subjects, In the case of women
his being Data has the equivalent of the device implanted in Alex played
objectification occurs in relation to men. In Data’s case it is
from A Clockwork Orange, a device that makes him physically sick if other
he even so much as thinks about sex. Data isn't made sick by his pro- out in relation to humans. In this sense, Data represents the
s get
gramming, iv just asserts itself over his desires, overriding them so side of the Sadean contradiction, for though de Sade’s libertine
into
that he has no opportunity to pursue his own goals. In this case Data to experlence the pleasures of a life dissolved and dispersed
of all things,
is as one possessed, for he has no control over his own actions. He other beings, the heterogeneous mixing together
nce
cannot make choices of his own free will, for good or bad, but is including subjects and objects, in order to achieve this experie
them
completely enslaved to the will of others, to the point of not even they must first turn these others into pure objects by robbing
captured and
being able to have feelings and sensations of his own. It may be of their own subjectivity. Remember all those children
argued that this Is what the Borg do to those they/it conquer, But held in chains to do the libertines’ bidding?
also a
while each new recruit has their will absorbed into the collective, If there is a liberatory way of viewing this fantasy, there Is
for those who
there is no suggestion that they stop feeling, stop having sensations. paradoxical price to be paid lor it. It"s all very well
they might be
Data by, contrast, is the walking dead, and after his brush with life, want it, those who are its subjects, however much
don't, those who
courtesy of The Borg, he must know this in an even more painfully trying to become Other. But what about those who
to these
acute manner than ever before, are forced, precisely because they don’t want it, to conform
 Allens K LUis Star Teek: Furst Conttact W1

desires? It is this negative side of the Sadean fantasy that so troubles be conceived as objects external 1o their being.'' Rather, following
us in the Borg, even if, like Sade, we love the fantasy at one level. Nietzsche, we must recognise ‘that from its “origins” the human has
On the one hand we want to see them, like 7 of 9, as proud and been constituted by technical evolution’.'® Whether these
happy in their extraordinarily heterogencous collective conscious- techniques be sticks and bones, printing pressesof the VCR, whether
ness. On the other, at the level at which we continue to view them evolved in thatched huts on desert plains or in the high-rise towers
as individuals, we can’t help feeling they are being held against their of concrete jungles, as Pearson persuasively argues, the human is
wills, One could argue that this is a flaw in the design concept, for
something absolutely distinct from the natural because it is essen-
if we take the logic of the Borg literally then, like Bosch’s hybrids we
tially artificial, even if this artificiality plays itself out around and
should not be able to delineate them into discrete individuals at all,
through a biological core. Furthermore, not only is the human
In the case of the Borg then the contradiction is only an effect of the
alwavs involved in a series of contingent technical ‘natures’, its
lack of imagination on the part of the show's designers and writers,
modes of artificiality are never fixed but always in a process of
not of their actual being. But in the case of Data, as with women and
becoming. From this perspective, the fantastical, category-breaking
those forcibly colonised, the paradox is real, and as such, like men
Borg are not other at all. They are actually a reflection of our own
and colonialists, the makers of the series must make up their minds.
hybrid, freakish ‘nature’, our Doppelganger. Their hybridity is our
Either he is a real subject, in which case he must be allowed o
develop his emotions and sensations as he wishes, not having to hybridity, their polymorphous heterogeneous becoming our poly-
switch them off whenever others require it, or he is not, in which morphous heterogeneous becoming. As Pearson so succinctly sums
case it should be honestly admitted that he is in a state of possessed us up, ‘[tJhe human being is the greatest freak of nature and the only
servitude, the slave to others’ wills, however conscious and intelli- features we can be certain of are monstrous ones characterised by
gent he may be, If the latter is the case, it will be a miracle if he perpetual mutation and morphing’.
doesn’t end up like Marvin the paranoid android from The However, arguing that humanity is a monstrous technical
Hitchhiker's Gueide to the Galaxy. As Marge Piercy shows in her novel becoming is not the same as opting for an uncritical acceptance of
He, She, It, if we ever do develop robots that are fully self-conscious, the technological commodification foisted on us by unbridled
we do not have the right to put them in this position, especially not capitalism. Rather, it is to argue for a “critical in-humanity’ which
one 30 charming, so playful, so multi-techniqued as Data, goes beyond the ethics of possessive individualism by recognising
that the thoughts and other creations generated at the interface
CONCLUSION: THE TRANS-HUMAN between the human and the technological - beginning with the
There is, of course, another reason why Data must give up his originary mnemotechnics constitutive of human thinking - are not
cherished flesh. If he did not, there is nothing, in principle, to dis- purely human, but frans-human, for they include the contributions
tinguish between him and The Borg. If he kept his skin, he would of the technics/techniques themselves, and the pluralities of
be the same hybrid fusion of organics and technology. And we becoming these bring into (our) being. Viewed from this perspective
couldn't have that, now could we? But, then again, Jordie has tech- the Borg are indeed ‘other’, but they represent the otherness in
nological implants. 5o what does that make him? ourselves, that radical otherness which lies at the heart of our own
This brings us 1o what | believe is the truly radical point of the artificially becoming, technical and multiplicitous ‘nature-s”. It is
maovie, for there is perhaps a more complex reason why we are so precisely because this instability, this plurality, this extended, non-
fascinated by these hybrid creatures, one that bears on the very body-bounded becoming threatens capitalism that it is defined as
definition of what it is to be human. As Keith Ansell Pearson argues other, and repressed. For only through the repression of this
in Viroid Life, his marvellous defence of Nietzsche's theory of the relational and equivocal otherness can we be maintained as passive,
trans-human, humans cannot, as Western philosophy has so long discrete and possessive individuals; that is, as subjects of enlightened
assumed, be defined as self-contained subjects using tools that may consumption. Fortunately, as Freud said, that which is repressed
92 Aligns
R Us Stur Teek: First Contact 93

real. With any luck the Borg might just turn

in the s
always return 13, Either that,or we end up in some boring “post-' not trans-human fantasy
where the elite look like Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman and everyone
up one day and assimilate us for real.'* else is a troll. For an excellent critique of this possible future, see Marge
In any case, as all the hybrids presented in this movie - Data, Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, New York, Knopl, 1976. Piercy’s
the Borg and The Borg - suggest it may never be possible to make point, along with Pearson and so many others, is that the media, medical
an absolute distinction between subject and object, (hu)yman and and pharmaceutical industries notwithstanding. we make the future, not
machine, the | of the self and the All of the-m-others. Perhaps the some impersonal evolutionary drive that will only realise itsell in some
‘post’-human purely machinic future. This myth of a post-human goal
truth is that each and every one of us is penetrated by an for evolution is merely a device employed by these industries o repress
Otherness from which it is impossible to properly distinguish a far more radical and active engagement between humans and
ourselves, ever. technology that might upset the passive consumerist logic of Late
Capitalism.
NOTES
1. De Sade, quoted in Rosemary Jackson, Famtasy: The Literature of
Subversi New York, Routledge, 1988, p. 73,
London and on,
2 Iisicd.
amd the Other: The New Imperialism
3. See Ziauddin Sardar, Postrmodernism
of Western Culture, London and Chicago. Fluto Press, 1998,
. See “What is Pop Ant? Interviews with Eight Painters (Part 1), Art News,
New York, November 1963, and John Russell and Suzi Gablik (eds), Pop
Art Redefined, London, 1969,
. Jackson, Fantasy, p. 74.
. However, if there is a positive, unrepressed side 1o this fantasy or even
-]

1o its actual realis is also a very negative side for,

ation,
there as de Sade
himself shows, an absolute un-self-consci ousness reigns here. The
problem is that, though in fantasy this may be desirable, in actuality it
would not only make society untenable, it would make survival itself
impossible, for thosein such a state would require others, who are
themselves self-conscious subjects, 1o take care of them. An excellent
account of such a state is given in Watl, Samuel Beckett's finest novel.
The other aspect of this state only touched on hereis the fact that,
though to some people it appears as liberatory, to others it simply
stark terror.
induce s of the
For an excellent, if thoroughly nasty account
terrible side of this fantasy, see The Event Hovizon | 1997, directed by Paul
Anderson (1), Golar Production/Impact Pictures/Faramount Pictures,
95 minutes, L'SA).
Sev Georges Bataille, Visiors of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, Min-
neapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1985, See especially ‘Base
Matenalism and Gnosticism', pp. 45-52.
8. Jackson, Famtasy, p. 23.
For an excellent account of this problematic, see Juliet Mitchell and
Jacqueline Rose (eds), Jacqueline Rose (trans. ) Jacgues Lacan and the Ecole
Frewdienne, London, Macmillan, 1982
10 There really are too many questions raised by this issue of Data’s sexual
programming for the producers of the saga not 1o enable us to explone
it more fully in future
11. See Keith Ansell Pearson, Viroid Life, London, Routledge, 1997, p. 4.
12 Ibid., p. 5.