The Abolition of Gender

Postgender Technologies in Sayuri Ueda’s The Cage of Zeus

Abstract

This paper studies a contemporary example of postgender science fiction, The Cage of Zeus by Sayuri Ueda. Postgenderism, a cultural movement towards the deconstruction of the gender binary, is often assisted in science fiction by postgender technologies such as reprogenetics or advanced bioengineering that alter the human body and its social perceptions beyond simple binary categorization. My paper will explore how, in the world of The Cage of Zeus, postgender technologies are used in an attempt to build an ideal postgender society in which binary gender no longer exists. However, the attempt ultimately fails, because those very postgender technologies undermine their own purpose by inadvertently promoting binary thinking. The paper is organized into three broad sections; the first section introduces postgenderism, the second section offers an overview of postgenderism in speculative fiction, and the third section engages deeply with the postgender technologies and world-building of The Cage of Zeus itself.