Kotani Mari has related this act of cannibalism on Shinji-EVA’s part to “the explosion of the radically feminine, that is, to what Alice Jardine calls ‘gynesis’”. Kotani describes the scene this way:
The moment electric technology becomes unavailable (his power supply cords have been cut), Shinji strongly hopes for a miracle. Thus, with the ultimate aim to defeat the enemy, Shinji very naturally but miraculously comes to feminize himself. This sequence unveils Shinji’s epiphany. The more strongly he desires a miraculous breakthrough, the more deconstructive his own sexuality becomes. Hence the abrupt explosion of fearful femininity out of Shinji’s own male subjectivity.
Despite the hyper-masculine outlines of the EVA suit and the fact that the pilot of 01 is a boy, over the course of the series in scenes such as this one the Shinji-EVA cyborg amalgam is is decisively gendered feminine: the uncontrollable, insufficiently bounded body/subjectivity that enlightened, rational modernity has sought to repress. And yet, it is in precisely these same scenes that the Shinji-EVA cyborg through some kind of hysterical crisis to overcome the limits of technology – the power cord and backup battery – to defeat the attacking angel.
This narrative, therefore, emplots both the male terror of being radically feminized through the excessive intimacy implied by the interpenetration and intercorporation of the cyborg subject and the paradoxical hope that the one power that can finally oppose the various forces of evil is precisely the eruption of the abject femininity – permeability/penetrability – that is repressed in techno-patriarchal society. That powerful eruption can only occur, however, when the interconnection of the various cyborg elements is at its maximum. In the nineteenth episode Shinji’s synchronization rate with the suit is an inconceivable 400%, indicating that, despite the terror it provokes, the only hope for humankind is to move toward
increased intimacy – permeability/penetrability – with the mechanical other.
Sharalyn Orbaugh, “Sex and the Single Cyborg – Japanese Pop Culture Experiments in Subjectivity.” Originally published in Science Fiction Studies, Vol 29 (3), pages 436-452. November, 2002.
Many thanks to milenashakujo for linking me to this. If you enjoy Donna Haraway, cyborg feminism, psychoanalysis, and Japanese science fiction anime, you will love this read.
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iamspineless replied to your quote
“Kotani Mari has related this act of cannibalism on Shinji-EVA’s part…”
Is this saying that the act of hoping for a miracle is a feminine one? If that’s the case, is Misato’s rejection of miracles a masculine act?
Disclaimer: it has now been many years since I’ve watched Evangelion in full, or been involved with its discussion, so bear with me. I’m working off a fractured recollection of my own viewings/analysis.
The “miracle” that Shinji is hoping for – that the EVA will move despite being severed from its power supply, its metaphorical connection to the masculine, to the imposed constraints of technology – is the reconciliation of paradox; that a newfound and unbounded integration with the terrifying, repressed feminine will somehow permit the EVA to rebound and fight. It is worth noting that Kierkegaard (who is referenced tangentially in the series, but whose concept of existentialism I find most useful in my own personal understanding of Evangelion) defines faith as a reconciliation of paradox, as the embrace of the absurd, and a prospect necessarily fraught with terror. What is a miracle if not the reconciliation, of the impossible with the possible? (All that I have lost, I may gain back again, by virtue of the absurd. The EVA cannot move, but it will move, or else everyone will die, or else there is no point to any of this. Move move move move move.)
In light of this paper, does the will to reconciliation, the impossible hope for a miracle, become a feminine act? Is Misato’s rejection of miracles a rejection of femininity, of her own femininity, and thus a kind of existential rejection? Maybe. I have argued in the past that the adults in Eva are very good at precisely this self-denial, or perhaps more accurately, self-erasure. Evangelion does seem to tell us that the pathway to redemption, both for Shinji and for humanity, is indeed that reconciliation of the seemingly opposite; of Self with Other, of “Masculine” with “Feminine,” of the Finite and the Infinite, in ways that are likely to be frightening and uncomfortable. We do not take the path of least resistance, the path to obliterate one for the sake of the other, but instead find new and creative means of incorporation, of negotiating boundaries and categories that once seemed both fatalistic and immutable.
NB: Many thanks again to @qmisato for all her tireless work, and without whose structure and guidance, my own would be terminally scattered.
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