The Pleasure of Confusing Boundaries in World War Robot

By Neil Baird

In “A Cyborg Manifesto,” Donna Haraway uses the SF icon of the cyborg to make “an argument for pleasure in confusing boundaries and for responsibility in their construction” (150). This presentation seeks to bring critical attention to Ashley Wood and T. P. Louise’s World War Robot by examining the ways in which this graphic novel takes pleasure in confusing boundaries. Combining an unconventional use of oil paintings and nonfiction genres such as letters, diaries, and transcripts, World War Robot tells the story of a war between Mars, settled by humans with faith in science, and Earth, who seeks to enslave Mars with its fanatic religious ideals. Both sides utilize warbots in their conflict, supplied by Darwin Rothchild from a neutral location on the moon.

More specifically, this presentation will examine how the visual rhetoric of Wood’s oil paintings, which offer no clear boundaries, and the narrative strategy of telling a larger story through individual accounts confuse boundaries between human and machine. This presentation will also consider how these visual and narrative strategies make strong demands on fans by collapsing the boundaries between author and writer to foster what Henry Jenkins calls a participatory culture. Because World War Robot takes pleasure in “transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities” (Haraway 150), this presentation ultimately examines how such boundary confusion fosters responsibility for and critical examination of war, trauma, and technology.