Ïan Larue

Ïan Larue, (2 September 1958) is an essayist, science fiction author and painter. She has published two science fiction novels, La Vestale du calix and La fille geek.

One of her best-selling books, ''Libère-toi cyborg. Le pouvoir transformateur de la science-fiction féministe'', deals with the theme of cyborgs. Reflecting on the list of feminist science fiction authors cited at the end of Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto (including Octavia Butler), Ïan Larue redefines this founding figure in the philosopher's thought. According to the author, ‘The cyborg is the ultimate hybrid, a hybrid between a real woman and a character in a novel who is superimposed on her to endow her with a thousand new possibilities, including the fundamental one of breaking up capitalism, family and patriarchy.’ In 2019 Ïan Larue was the winner of the Grand prix de l'Imaginaire, in the ‘Essays’ category, for this non-fiction book.

Biography
After teaching at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Ïan Larue worked at the Sorbonne Paris North University teaching compared litterature.

Libère-toi cyborg
Her essay Libère-toi cyborg, le pouvoir transformateur de la science-fiction féministe (Set youself free, Cyborg ! The transformative power of feminist science fiction), published in 2018, placed her among the leading French-language figures in feminist science fiction. In the essay, she comments extensively Donna Harraway's Cyborg Manifesto, and reproduces in an appendix Harraway's ‘H-list’ of works by women science fiction novelists that she believed were must-reads for building a utopian future world free of racism and sexism, or even one that embraces a hybridisation between nature and technology. Among these must read women SF writer ared : included : Octavia Butler (Dawn, part of the Xenogenesis Trilogy), Joanna Russ (The Female Man), Monique Wittig (Les Guérillères) and James Tiptree, Jr (Beyond the World's Walls). In these worlds, cyborgs transgress gender and norms, while often incorporating aspects of ecofeminism and feminist figures of witchcraft, creating a path of emancipation and joyful liberation.

Painting
Ïan Larue is the granddaughter of the painter and film set designer Charles Mérangel. She has been painting since the age of eleven. She held exhibitions in the 2000s[1]. In 2020 she took part in the group exhibition Even the rocks reach out to kiss you, at the Centre d'art contemporain Transpalette in Bourges and the exhibition Rêver l'obscur, at the Galerie d'art brut Christian Berst in Paris[3]. The curator of both exhibitions is Julie Crenn, an exhibition curator, art historian and specialist in ecofeminist art.

She has also published an essay about the role of women painter throughout history from antiquity and medieval times, questionning the reasons of their disapearence from historical reviews.