A Cyborg Ghost in the Ship : A Post-Structuralist Analysis of ‘Ghost in the Shell’ Through ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ and the ‘Ship of Theseus’ Thought Experiment on the Question of Identity

This essay uses Donna Haraway’s 1985 text ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ and the ‘Ship of Theseus’ thought experiment as post-structuralist lenses to analyze Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 film Ghost in the Shell, in order to extract through this intersection the extent to which– and way in which– identity in it’s forms and conceptions is substantial, especially through the use of the cyborg figure.

In order to proceed, we must establish an understanding of post-structuralism to apply within this context. Post-structuralism, as the name suggests, is a reaction to structuralism. Structuralism can be understood as a “mode of knowledge of nature and human life that is interested in relationships rather than individual objects or, alternatively, where objects are defined by the set of relationships of which they are part and not by the qualities possessed by them taken in isolation.” (Barbosa de Almeida). In response, post-structuralists “critiqued structuralism’s reliance on centers and binary oppositions; they questioned the soundness of ontology and demonstrated the emergence of Truth regimes; and they developed new ways of thinking about difference and identity that are anti-essentialist rather than grounded or fixed a priori.” (Woodward et al.). Essentially, we can describe this interaction as post-structuralism rejecting structuralism’s subscription to using structural approaches in classification, which thereby implicitly create hierarchies and binaries that leave out a nuance that comes from examining and comprehending an entity or object for what it is on it’s own, without the pre-conceived notions and archetyping that tend to be born from within the structuralist dualisms.

Haraway, literary theorist and the author of ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, is particularly relevant to this discussion, being a post-structuralist thinker herself, and especially in her use of the figure of the cyborg– or cybernetic organism– to demonstrate and develop her ideas following this approach. The introduction to her essay ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ says that Haraway is part of “a school of thought known as post-structuralism […] [which sees] traditional Western rationalist philosophy as a flawed system based on dichotomies — paired sets of opposite concepts such as White/Black, male/female, and human/machine — that are presented as natural truths but that are in fact fictional oppositions that serve to heighten the status of one term over the other.” (Haraway, 455–456). This opening statement perfectly leads us into the intertwining ideas of identity, post-structuralism, and the cyborg figure, as will be connected and explored in the essay, particularly in conjunction with Ghost in the Shell, a science fiction film set in 2029 which follows a cyborg federal agent called Major Motoko Kusanagi as she tracks down an elusive hacker referred to as the Puppet Master, in the process exploring philosophical questions of identity and sentience and the substantiality of these terms through the uniquely post-structuralist cyborg figure.

Haraway’s post-structuralist approach to thinking of identity through the symbol of the cyborg helps unveil the philosophical implications in Ghost in the Shell of how humanity is a construct that relies on false dichotomies of the organic/material in order to lay claim to a superior status of sentience. Haraway writes, “A cyborg is […] a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction […] Liberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative apprehension, of oppression, and so of possibility. The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience” (Haraway, 456–457), and, “The boundary is permeable between tool and myth, instrument and concept, historical systems of social relations and historical anatomies of possible bodies, including objects of knowledge. Indeed, myth and tool mutually constitute each other.” (Haraway, 465). The first quote demonstrates the way our social reality– our understanding of ourselves and our relationships to others– is inextricably melded with and shaped by the ‘political’ fictions we create, in other words the identity politics that make humans claim a higher level of sentience than technology– and that the liberation from this false hierarchy depends on the reforming of these constructions and structural understandings. The second quote makes this function of our social construction clear- these political myths that we build are wielded as tools by us in order to uphold the status of our humanity. She names the dynamic in “myth and tool mutually constitute each other” — each compared to entities and social realities, respectively– revealing how our political constructions are myths used as tools, and are tools that become naturalized as our history, our mythology.

Applying these to the film, we can look at the scene where the Puppet Master is taken in by Section 9. They believe it to be a human ghost within the cybernetic shell, and are in the process of considering releasing the shell to Section 6 who claim to have lured the Puppet Master into the cyborg shell, until the Puppet Master says, “I have never possessed a body […] As a sentient lifeform, I hereby demand political asylum” (Ghost in the Shell, 47:56–48:20), eliciting a philosophical debate on memory, sentience, and humanity with the Section 6 leader. In this scene, we see how the Puppet Master fundamentally unravels what we take for granted as markers for human identity, particularly when he undoes the significance of memory as a tool for human self-definition, saying “And life, when organized into species…relies upon genes to be its memory system. So man is an individual memory system only because of his intangible memory. And a memory cannot be defined, but it defines mankind. When the advent of computers made the externalization of memories possible you should have taken its meaning more seriously.” (Ghost in the Shell, 48:39–49:02). By first deconstructing humanity to it’s parts and revealing the structure used to purport it as an entity with a sentience or claim to life distinct from cybernetic forms– specifically memory in this case– the Puppet Master antecedently questions the definition and significance of memory itself by demonstrating how it applies in a fundamentally similar fashion in technology. In doing so he proposes that memory as it is understood and consequently utilized as evidence for humanity’s superior grasp of sentience– in Haraway’s words, the political construction– is unfounded and fallible, because, as demonstrated through his example of computers, there is a gap between having memories and having experienced them, that may not be clear to the form that holds them– whether cybernetic, organic, or both. Using the lens of the Haraway quote, we see memory develop nuance, become a cyborg of its own– both a social reality and a possible fiction, especially relevant when it is used as the foundation for the argument of intellectual supremacy. These themes are echoed in the visual language as well, most prominently in the holograms used in these sequence of scenes that use the symbol of a human brain to be representative of the auxiliary brain and the intellect of the cybernetic body. Here, we see the implicit embrace of the disjunction between form and function as it relates to the organic/cybernetic. Like memory, intellect or sentience as functions are acknowledged within the cybernetic forms, despite appearing nothing like the organic form– and are seen to be considered worthy of comparison to the human brain, seen in the fact that they are symbolized by the latter. This, similar to the Puppet Master’s speech, helps the viewer question the veil that makes us think of our consciousness and intellect as distinct from that of ‘artificial intelligence’. We can therefore post-structurally extract from the Puppet Master’s words and the accompanying visuals that in the demonstrated fallibility between the supposedly harsh dichotomy between human and ‘artificial intelligence’, there is a call for the re-examination and therefore redefinition of ideas of memory, sentience, and identity, especially when wielded to the end of claiming a higher level of intelligence and awareness for possessing them.

The separation of form and function seen in the use of the brain holograms, leads us effectively to the ‘Ship of Theseus’ thought experiment, echoing the crux of its idea– the question of how the abstract relates to the corporeal. The thought experiment, ‘The Ship of Theseus’ has different variations, but essentially there is a Ship of Theseus, and every year, one component of the ship is replaced. When more than half of the components have been replaced, can it still be called the Ship of Theseus faithfully? Proceeding from that, when all of the components of the ship have been replaced, can it still be called the Ship of Theseus faithfully? And finally, in the latter case, if all the original components are reformed into the same configuration they were originally, which ship– the one with the original, removed components that have been refabricated into the original configuration, or the ‘original’ ship that was slowly, and completely, replaced with new components– would be the true Ship of Theseus? These questions elicited from the thought experiment relate closely to our discussion of post-structuralism in the way the thought experiment understands identity as lying on a continuum as opposed to something static and easily defined.

We can use it as a lens to look at the scene in which Batou is telling Togusa about the cyborg nature of most of Section 6. He says, “Major Kusanagi’s body was also made by Megatech. Not only her. Also parts of me, Ishikawa, and Saito. We also receive regular cybernetic maintenance from them. Apart from you and the chief, the whole section comes with a warranty.” (Ghost in the Shell, 39:35–39:51). Here we see the film make use of the Major and the other members of Section 6 to model different stages on the cyborg continuum– between organic and cybernetic– with Togusa and the chief as the least cybernetic, Batou and the other members as partly cybernetic, and the Major as being almost completely cybernetic. Using the thought experiment as a lens, we can see that the way these characters are put on the cyborg continuum is akin to the different stages of the ship that go from completely having original components to completely having replacements. This lens– in it’s post-structural way– adds nuance to our conception of identity, making us question if identity subsumes or is subsumed by change, whether change negates the very idea of identity, and if so, what amount of change is enough?

These ideas are reinforced in the film towards the end, during the scene where the Puppet Master proposes merging with the Major. She asks him, “Can you guarantee that I will still be myself?” (Ghost in the Shell, 1:12:02–1:12:04), to which he responds, “There isn’t one. People change…and your longing to remain yourself will continue to restrict you.” (Ghost in the Shell, 1:12:05–1:12:15). After the merge, in the final lines of the film, the cyborg says to Batou, “Neither the program called the ‘Puppet Master’…nor the woman known as the ‘Major’ are no longer here […] 2501? That can be our private password when we meet each other again.” (Ghost in the Shell, 1:16:51–1:17:12), and then says to herself as she overlooks the city, “Well, where shall I go? The net is vast and infinite.” (Ghost in the Shell, 1:17:20–1:17:26). Once again the cyborg figure is used as a post-structuralist demonstration of how identity– if it even exists– does so in gray spaces, rejecting easy and solid definition, demanding instead to be looked at at a point in time and space, and as a point in time and space, existing solitary of structuralist oppositions, revelling in possibility. This can be seen before the merge, in the Puppet Master’s words as he rates his conception of identity as positively overcome by change, allowing a freedom reminiscent of Haraway’s ideas of liberation. In the quotes after the merge, we see potently exemplified the post-structuralist nature of the cyborg not only when she tells Batou that she is not the Puppet Master or the Major, but in the implication in her next words, where she shares a private password between them. This tells us that she foresees herself jumping shells, entities, unrecognizable to Batou without the passcode. Her final line, “The net is vast and infinite” reiterates this, succinctly condensing the cyborg figure as the symbol for possibility, for change, reinventing and deconstructing the very nature of identity.

Through using the post-structuralist lenses of ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ and the ‘Ship of Theseus’ thought experiment to analyze Ghost in the Shell, we extract the way the figure of the cyborg is a symbol for the questioning of identity in not only it’s definition but also it’s value, arriving at a post-structuralist freedom that rejects hard conceptions of identity in favour of a more fluid continuum of identity or (non) identity– forming a cyborg out of the ideas of identity and possibility.

Works Cited

Barbosa de Almeida, Mauro W. “Structuralism.” International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd Edition, Vol 23, edited by James D. Wright, Elsevier, 2015, pp. 626–31.

Ghost in the Shell. Directed by Oshii Mamoru, 1995.

https://archive.org/details/ghost-in-the-shell-1008p.

Haraway, Donna J. “A Cyborg Manifesto.” 1985. Artificial Life: Critical Contexts, 1991, pp. 455–75, canvas.newschool.edu/courses/1752883/assignments/syllabus.

Woodward, K., et al. “Poststructuralism/Poststructuralist Geographies.” International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, edited by Rob Kitchin and Nigel Thrift, Elsevier, 2009, pp. 396–407.