Emily Powers
Research focus: Library-based research on gender and philosophy in video games
Researching the performative nature of technology in the cyborgs of RPG game Cyberpunk 2077, with focus on how the cyborg body performs and parodies gender through augmentation and the limitations of human involvement in transcending the boundaries of cyborgs. This thesis looks at the stylization of the body through technology, acts, and gestures to create not only a symbiotic identity between the player and character, but highlighting the distanciation between the two and what factors contribute to the separation of the two entities.
Using Butler's theory of performativity and Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto as a lens in which to see the game as an interrogation of how Cyberpunk 2077 undoes the masculine construction of identity that is embedded in the genre it emerges from as well as the culture of video game spaces.
Supervised by Prof Tom Grimwood (tom.grimwood@cumbria.ac.uk) and Dr Paul Ferguson (paul.ferguson@uni.cumbria.ac.uk).