“A Cyborg Manifesto” Donna Haraway

  Haraway presents the idea that we are all cyborgs and we have become this way through mutations in media, technology and social organizations.  Her definition of a cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of a machine and organism; a creature of social reality and fiction. A quote that I found eerily interesting is: “The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity.”To claim that we are all cyborgs in a “post gender” world is scary and reminds me of science fiction movies, as it seems to be a popular theme. She says we are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism. Again, I find this to be frightening if its at all true. What makes this “manifesto” feminist is that unlike the dualist socialist-feminism, a cyborg feminist is only interested in looking forward. Cyber-feminism is seen as more progressive than its predecessor who looked back to Marxism for answers.

  Haraway breaks down traditional boundaries into three divisions, the first being human and animal. Here she refers to the animal rights movements as a prime example for “a clear-sighted recognition of connection across the discredited breach of nature and culture.”Then she moves on to the human/animal and machine relationship. I agree with Haraway’s observation that the technologies of our time have given us a frame of mind that never existed before, a part of us that recognizes the difference between natural and artificial. The last distinction that she makes is between the physical and non physical. She suggests that because we cannot fully rid our minds of these differences and boundaries, feminists in particular should give up the utopian dream of some return to nature and purity. The answer to all of this is the cyborg. She says that if we are all cyborgs, then we can experience a whole new set of social and political practices and we can decide what is appropriate instead of relying on the rigid set of standards that have existed thus far.

  Technology and informatics have become so advanced that societal norms are becoming obsolete and the roles that people played are changing. We are attempting to find some common ground through a universal language and cybernetics is the system through which some sort of control is being attempted. We are now going beyond dualism to a point that is blurring the boundary between human and non human.

  In order for me to really absorb the point Haraway was trying to get across, I reread several sections of the manifesto. The ideas represented here are so foreign to me, which I suppose was to be the idea, but I find the whole thing to be terrifying. To think of society in the comfortable way I understand it to be and then to know that it is changing beneath our feet into something that is so unnatural and artificial-it is a little uncomfortable. I do feel challenged however, to pay attention to my surroundings and really observe the roles that I play. At first, I thought the writer was a little crazy and maybe had read too many science fiction novels, but the more I tried to wrap my brain around her ideas, the more they made sense to me. I wonder what she thinks about how far we have come since 1985…

I found this interesting video interpretation of the manifesto. Its a little cheesy, but worth watching.