About the Author
This website represents the culmination of my time at the University of Texas at Austin receiving my Masters in Media Studies.
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I first began to take an interest in machine-human interactions and relationships in Dr. Sharon Strover's "Communication, Technology, and Culture" class, where I was first introduced to the digital influencer Lil Miquela. Miquela was the start of my thinking about the ways that we integrate machines and technology into our daily lives. In following this line of enquiry, I found myself contemplating the way that in taking a recuperative stance toward technology, and in looking at our images of machines and tech through a queer lens, can reveal new modes of being in the world. I found myself transfixed by the ways that these creations are frequently the backdrop that allow humans a way to imagine a different world and a different self. More often than not, these imaginings take on a distinctly counter-hegemonic sensibility.
Halfway through “Communication, Technology, and Culture” (Spring 2020), the COVID-19 pandemic forced us into remote online courses. I’m writing this section on the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring a worldwide pandemic. Since then, I’ve completed the majority of my Masters remotely.
(Un)Plugging Temporalities
Queer temporality aboard the Nebuchadnezzar and in the Matrix
The Wachowski siblings’ 1999 film, The Matrix, is the first film about the prophesied Chosen One, Neo, and his journey towards liberating humanity from the simulation known as the Matrix. Although Neo was released from the
Matrix and regained free will, he still (along with others of the resistance) integrates with machines and their software in order to traverse between the “Desert of the Real” and the simulated world of the Matrix. This back-and-forth between the two creates different temporalities for the characters to inhabit. In this offshoot I investigate the manners in which Neo inhabits a queer temporality while inside the Matrix and after gaining his freedom and living aboard the Nebuchadnezzar. While each temporality acts differently based on whether he is in the Matrix or not, Neo gains access to them through his ability to understand and, later, physically integrate with machines. Whether or not Neo is still in the Matrix or if he’s on earth, he occupies a queer temporality. Regardless of location, Neo consistently falls outside of heteronormative notions of linear time that are focused on having children and wealth acquisition. Instead, queer temporality allows Neo the freedom to explore himself, his relation to machines, and to form relationships with others on the fringe—namely, the crew aboard the Nebuchadnezzar.
What is a Queer Temporality?
Queer temporality is a rejecting of heteronormative timelines characterized by linear and narrative driven conceptions of time. Heteronormative temporality is riddled with embedded value systems affirming the importance of the accumulation of wealth, monogamy, marriage, and child-rearing. It is not my intention to critique these values in this offshoot. I only offer examples from the Matrix that I view as alternative conceptions outside of the heteronormative kinship model. Ideally, these examples also inspire the audience to think about how these values, informed since birth, can change with the introduction of machines and cyberspace.
“You believe it’s the year 1999, when it’s in fact closer to 2199. I can’t tell you exactly what year it is because we honestly don’t know.”
—Morpheus, The Matrix
In “Theorizing Queer Temporalities: A Roundtable Discussion,” queer theorist Jack Halberstam describes queer time as the:
“perverse turn away from the narrative coherence of adolescence– early adulthood –marriage – reproduction – child rearing–retirement –death, the embrace of late childhood in place of early adult-hood or immaturity in place of responsibility" (182).
Queer temporalities are places that the social scripts people are fed from birth are questioned and critiqued. They are places of learning and growth. In the same roundtable discussion, theorist Nguyen Tan Hoang asserts how queer time is also focused on how queer experience is taught from one generation to the next often exceeding in “innovative ways the heterosexual kinship/reproductive model” (183). Hoang then expands this into two steps that delineate queer time:
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Retracing a young person’s secretive and circuitous routes to queer culture
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This can occur can be through music, art, popular culture, etc—In Neo’s case cyberspace and hacking led him to a facet of queer culture as directly evidenced by “following the white rabbit”)
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Revisiting the various scenes of queer pedagogy
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Like the classroom, library, bar, chat room, etc
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Even before Neo’s ejection from the Matrix, the audience sees him seeking out the dark nightclub (like Jack Halberstam), or spending endless nights in cyberspace looking for answers. From the beginning of the film, the audience is given two distinct sides of Neo, torn between two temporalities; Neo, the infamous hacker endlessly trawling through cyberspace and losing himself in underground punk clubs; and Thomas Anderson, a bland cog in the machine, working his life away at the software company, Metacortex (a fun play on words that eventually hints at its own simulative construction). These temporalities are thrown into even starker relief once Neo is freed from the Matrix. He is constantly divided between time in the Matrix (set around 1999) and time aboard the Nebuchadnezzar—where it is dark, underground, and Neo is unable to discern what day it is as he fights for survival. From this moment on, Neo slips back-and-forth between the Nebuchadnezzar and the Matrix, while turning away from linearity (in reference to the body/mind split between the real world and the Matrix) and goal-oriented hetero conceptions of time.
Neo inhabiting cyberspace and the club where he meets Trinity for the first time.
 Queer Temporality Aboard the Nebuchadnezzar |  Queer Temporality in the Matrix |
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 Building a Queer Body |  Back to the Matrix Entrance Page |
Neo inhabits queer temporalities both within and outside of the Matrix. What are ways that technology allows users to inhabit a temporality outside of marriage, wealth accruement, and child-rearing? Is it possible to inhabit two temporalities at once?
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