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half-metal half-flesh hybrid as an analogy for interpreting postmodern feminist identity. For Haraway, a
cyborg is “a creature who transcends, confuses, or destroys boundaries” (Moya 71). Haraway uses cyborg
identities, those which defy neat categorization and blend the unblendable, to portray 2nd wave feminist
ideas that concepts like “race,” “gender,” and “identity” are arbitrary to the point where they are
irrelevant, random, and meaningless. Haraway explores the difficulty of late 20th century feminists to be
described “by a single adjective - or even to insist in every circumstance upon the noun” (295). She
continues, “With the hard-won recognition of their social and historical constitution, gender, race and
class cannot provide the basis for belief in ‘essential’ unity” (295), rather we should put aside our
identities in these terms and their contexts and combat fragmentation among feminists through “a growing
recognition of another response through coalition - affinity, not identity” (296). Among her definition of
cyborgs, Haraway examines the experiences of women of color, particularly American women of
In a response to the influential postmodern ideas Haraway and similar feminist scholars of the
time presented on identity, Paula M. L. Moya problematizes 2nd wave feminist thought in
“Postmodernism, ‘Realism,’ and the Politics of Identity.” Moya states that Haraway’s “conflation of
cyborgs with women of color raises serious theoretical and political issues, because she conceives of
women of color in overly idealized terms” (74). Haraway attempts to use “cyborg” Chicana women as an
example of how we can be freed from identity as the basis of politics since Chicana women, in their
complicated positions as Mexican-American women, use the stories and myths they have created to
“subvert command and control” (Haraway 311) their narratives. Moya, on the the hand, agrees with
Haraway that “people are not uniformly determined by any one social category,” but states that Haraway
“wrongly concludes that social categories (such as gender or race) can be irrelevant to the identities we
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choose” (75). Haraway, a white woman, appropriates the myths of Chicana women, and through her
rhetoric “authorizes herself to speak for actual women of color,” in effect dismissing their own
interpretations and experience (Moya 76). Haraway attempts to use her ethos as a white woman to
establish the credibility to speak for the experiences of all women and dismiss individual experience and
identity, promoting that if a theory works for someone in her social position, it will apply to everyone.
In place of Haraway’s attempt to reject identity entirely as inseparable from essentialism, Moya
suggests “a post-positivist realist theory of identity” to contrast Haraway. This theory of identity “insists
that we acknowledge and interrogate the consequences of social locations” and that “while identities are
not fixed, neither are they random” (Moya 87). Like Haraway, Moya recognizes that identities and
categories such as race, class, and gender not fixed essentials. However, Moya understands neither are
they randomized and meaningless, but capable of real and palpable material effects. They are “historically
produced social categories that constitute social locations” (Moya 69). Moya speaks to the definition of
feminism I have developed personally; feminism is the intersectional effort to promote equality for all
people and the effort to dismantle systemic oppression which, while not derived from anything essential,
is grounded in real physical consequences which differs for respective identities and social locations.
The same framework with which Moya critiques Haraway’s postmodern claim to the identities of
Chicana women can be applied to the song “Aura” off Lady Gaga’s 2013 studio album ARTPOP. The
album followed on the heels of the enormous success of her iconic second full-length studio album, Born
This Way. While Gaga’s hits from Born This Way highlighted themes of queer acceptance, religion, and
sex, such as in the thumping positivity of the namesake track and the dark riffs of the single Judas,
ARTPOP t ook a lighter, raunchier approach to Gaga’s signature topics of fame and female stardom. The
album begins with the high strums and clicking drums of the song “Aura.” While the song was never
chosen as a single off the album, Gaga places it as the first track of the album, making it the listener’s first
experience to the musical era following Born This Way. The track features intense glitchy EDM beats and
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wild electronic laughter from Gaga, making it outside standard formulaic pop songs, geared less for radio
play and more towards fans who are committed to buying the album and listening to it in full. “Aura”
occupies a space on the outskirts of Gaga’s discography, not as recognizable as Gaga’s standard hits but
still in an important position on one of her full-length albums. Not tailored for radio play or mass
marketability, “Aura” provides a more intimate view into Gaga’s use of songwriting to portray her own
views on identity and feminism. A rhetorical analysis of “Aura” using Moya’s framework of a realist
theory of identity and Haraway’s cyborg model of feminism reveals how the track exemplifies Lady
Gaga’s genre of pop music promoting postmodern feminism, conflating identity and experience while
As Gaga begins singing at the beginning of “Aura,” her distorted vocals describe killing her
former self and leaving her in the trunk of a car. The tempo and instrumentation quiet and as the beat
drops Gaga proceeds to scream-laugh over a wobbling, twanging EDM track and then roar, “I’m not a
wandering slave / I am a woman of choice.” The woman Gaga portrays in “Aura” is a mysterious entity.
She’s veiled, but it’s to “protect the gorgeousness” of her face. Despite being hidden, she’s also sexual,
inviting her lover to see her naked. “You want to pity me cuz was arranged one man to love,” Gaga sings,
adding dramatically, “But in the bedroom, the size of him’s more than enough.”
Halfway through the song, the woman’s “aura” is revealed to be a burqa. Gaga asks as the music
slows, “Do you wanna see the girl who lives behind the aura, behind the curtain, behind the burqa?” The
burqa as loose head-to-toe garment worn by many Muslim women as part of their religious practice and
tradition is never outright engaged with, despite the connotations the word has in the world. The song
never explores the burqa in the contexts of Islam or Muslim identity. However, the song does construct a
particular narrative around the burqa: the woman wearing it might or might not be veiled out of religious
observance, but we do know that the beauty of her face underneath needs to be discovered by her lover.
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She is “arranged one man to love,” an implication of arranged marriages prescribed to Muslim practice in
American thought, but the marriage arrangement is not portrayed as negative as it brings sexual pleasure.
Gaga further complicates the motif of the burqa by singing, “Enigma popstar is fun / She wear
burqa for fashion.” And then, for explanation, “It’s not a statement so much as a move of passion.” She
ambiguously wonders, “I may not walk on your street or should have gone on your soil / I hear you
screaming / Is it because of pleasure or toil?” This line recognizes a disparity of experience and a lack of
understanding between the singer and who she is addressing, though the identity of the addressee is left
ambiguous, and the sentiment is left mainly unexplored. The language of the song utilizes stereotypical
tropes of Middle Eastern and Muslim women in American media, such as that they are “wandering
slaves,” trapped in arranged marriages, and “screaming” either out of pleasure or toil. Gaga’s own burqa
is devoid of religious or political significance, and she attributes the veil to heightening sexual experience,
creating a fetishized anonymity by inviting a lover to undress her. “Do you wanna peek underneath the
cover?” she asks in the chorus, co-opting the possibility of sacred religious significance for the
In an interview with Logo TV on ARTPOP, Gaga gave some insight into her intentions for
making “Aura.” “These veils,” she told the interview, “they are really just protecting me from the thing
that I held the most scared, which is my creativity… My Aura is the way that I deal with my insanity and
I feel quite insane, so this song sounds very insane.” Explaining the lyric which describes the enigmatic
popstar wearing a burqa for fashion, Gaga said, “Everyone thinks that everything I do is a statement but
sometimes I’m just moved by something passionate and I want to express it.”
J. Jack Halberstam, author of the book Gaga Feminism, describes how icons like Gaga connect
contemporary feminism to global audiences. Halberstam sees Gaga as emblematic of a type of “gaga
feminism,” feminism that derives from popstar excess, punk aesthetic, the destruction of social norms,
and being so wild and phony that it inevitably destroys social norms and creates new definitions. Gaga’s
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ethos as a chart-topping superstar reach millions of people who will listen to what she says. Halberstam
sees gaga feminism as “gesturing toward new forms of revolt rather than patenting them,” full of “crazy,
unreadable appearances of wild genders; and social experimentation” (xiii). “Aura” certainly fits
Halberstam’s schema for an inscrutable and challenging form of feminism as social experimentation. The
song blends sexuality, stardom, religious practice, and unpolitical politics in an infectiously danceable
package. But if “Aura” is postmodern in approach, how does the song fit Moya’s context of
“Aura” attempts to randomize identity in a postmodern fashion, creating a hypnotic mess of EDM
beats and conflating pop-star creativity with Muslim women identities. Despite attempting to engage with
the complexities of religious practice and recast common stereotypes and narratives surrounding the burqa
in American thought, the song ultimately fails the women who have real experience and history
surrounding the use of the burqa. Gaga, a wealthy Italian-American woman, by equating her experiences
with fame and creativity as a “burqa” and stripping it of religious context while also fully engaging with
our implicit associations with Muslim identity, follows the postmodern tradition of claiming social
Since ARTPOP is Gaga’s third album, her credibility as one of the most successful and influential
female pop stars of the 21st Century is established in her record-breaking career. Like Donna Haraway,
Gaga uses her ethos as a white woman (and in Gaga’s case, a high-profile female pop star) to appropriate
the practices and experiences of Muslim women. Gaga, who does not have an established ethos wearing a
burqa for cultural or religious reasons, uses “Aura” to attempt and claim that ethos for herself and use it to
represent her pop-star life. She tries to circumvent critique of her misclaimed ethos by covering her
actions under the label of “passion” instead of “statement,” trying to strip the song of larger context and
pass it off as something confrontationally fun and lighthearted. But as Gaga wonders if the screams she
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hears are “from pleasure or toil,” she hints, unintentionally or not, at “the fact that some people are more
For Moya, “only by acknowledging the specificity and ‘simultaneity of oppression’... can we
begin to understand the systems and structures that perpetuate oppression and thereby place ourselves in a
position to contest and change them” (76). Gaga, like Haraway, created pieces of feminist thought that
attempted to use the ethos of their respective identities and social positions to misappropriate the
experiences of individual women by failing to “acknowledge and interrogate the consequences of social
location” (Moya 87), speaking over rather than with them. They are testaments to how easy
postmodernism can create alluring ideas of the meaningless of identity and social location, pushing
towards the aspiration of “a bodiless, genderless, raceless, and sexless existence” (99). While Lady Gaga
is brilliant at the vanguard of combining global influence and the subversion of normalized oppression,
she is also fails to recognize the importance of acknowledging the respective and simultaneous modes of
Works Cited
ARTPOP Jesus. “Track-By-Track ARTPOP Commentary by Lady Gaga.” YouTube, 8 Mar 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7Voaj0xzpc
Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto.” The Cybercultures Reader. Ed. David Bell and Barbara M.
Moya, Paula M.L. “Postmodernism, ‘Realism,’ and the Politics of Identity.” Reclaiming Identity: Realist