‘We are cyborgs’: Technology in Hari Kunzru’s short fiction

This article argues that a concern with technology and the social transformations initiated by the cyborgization of contemporary life permeates the semantics and aesthetics of several short stories by Hari Kunzru. Not only do the ‘cyborg stories’ address the increasingly tangled interface between human being and machine as a subject matter, but they also use the flexibility of the short story form to explore the ways in which technology, social media and the Digital Revolution alter human communication and modes of narration. By analyzing Kunzru’s stories through the lens of Donna Haraway’s cyborg theory and deconstructive philosophies of community, I will show that these short stories are ultimately concerned with the construction of community or, as Haraway says, ‘relationality’ in the Cyborg Age.