The artist Lynn Randolph collaborated with Donna Haraway to create this painting titled Cyborg.
After class, leave a comment on this blog post summarizing the reading and lecture. In your summaries, you should think about and mention connections that you might find between Haraway and the earlier readings. Keep doing this throughout the semester–drawing connections on your own. This is an important part of the cognitive work that I want you to perform in our class.
In Donna Harawayâs, âA Cyborg Manifesto,â she first defines the cyborg by giving it a kind of literal definition: itâs a cybernetic organism of a hybrid between machine and organism. Haraway alludes to dualism in this definition of the cyborg. It is a creature of social reality and of fiction. Here, Haraway is speaking about the several characters, images or representations of the cyborg in fiction, whether in literature, specifically science fiction or movies. Haraway is, also, speaking of a social reality. For one thing, she is alluding to the growth of technology, and how we have become attached to our technology. The cyborg, she says, is an imaginative resource, suggesting some fruitful couplings, in other words, if we put two things together, we can get a condensed image of both imagination and material reality. It is a way of imagining a world without gender, and therefore, a world without genesis or end. One of Harawayâs main concern is about the idea of gender and feminism. Sex and sexuality are meant for reproduction. So, a woman must take her place as a mother and as a nurturer. Therefore, things, like homosexuality are banned, illegal, immoral, and unnatural because they are not about reproduction. Haraway uses the myth of the cyborg to circumvent the argument about reproduction. The cyborg does not reproduce itself. It can replicate itself infinitely, but it does so with sexual reproduction. The cyborg can have sex, and it can enjoy bodily desires. Haraway further states that we have become cyborgs. She lists three ideas or leaks that illustrates this aggregation. First, there is an amalgamation of human and animal. Evolution has taught us that humans and animals are, intrinsically, occupy the same kingdom. Next, Haraway speaks about the mixing of categories, organism and machines. The idea that our machines have become lively and humans, themselves, are inert. In other words, our machines have become alive, while humans have remained static. Lastly, Haraway talks about the mixing of the categories, physical and non-physical. Our technology has become a burst of sunshine so to speak. Machines themselves are material, but at the same time they electromagnetic waves with âbursts of sunshine.â The physical and non-physical have crossed boundaries and fused together. The leaks have blurred the lines of organism, animal, and physical and nonphysical.
Colin Alli
Picking up where Mazlish left off with his take on the fourth discontinuity, Donna Harawayâs A Cyborg Manifesto implores the reader to embrace and nurture its relationship with technology, specifically, the cyborg. Defined by Haraway, a cyborg is ââŠa hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction,â; not anything that should be feared, but something that ought to be accepted as an extension of ourselves.
Haraway reinforces her assertion by using the blurred lines between human beings and technology as examples of how the two have become one. Whether it be a person relying on a machine to remain alive, as is the case with someone requiring dialysis to remain alive, or human beings relying on technology to mediate our digital and financial networks, as was discussed in lecture, Haraway indicates that we have more to gain by embracing the ambiguity of life as a cyborg than not.
According to Haraway, a cyborg is a politically enabling subject that has a massive impact on social relationships. This may ring true now more than ever, considering the divide and conquer strategies of the United States president, Donald Trump. Haraway might say that while on a quest to identify and connect with people and/or causes that we feel represent us (e.g. political parties, race-based organizations, etc.), we are actually creating an even deeper divide in society. Haraway would say the focus should be less on what makes us unique because these things detract from our humanity. Instead we should assume a more ambiguous role, like that of the cyborg, to improve present day social relations.
In Donna Harawayâs âA Cyborg Manifestoâ she gets into the ideology of how the human population are actually cyborgs. Haraway starts off by explaining what a cyborg is. A cyborg is created by social reality, and is a mix of machine and human. The idea of a cyborg comes from science-fiction movies and novels, in which they are organic beings whose experience of the world is mediated by technology. Some examples of these cyborgs in todayâs pop-culture are the terminator and darth vader. Haraway believes that we ourselves, are a form of cyborgs. âThe cyborg is in our ontology.â Whether we know it or not, we are all forms of cyborgs. The digital networks that we use everyday moves data all around the world and our very existence is all mediated by the technology that we use. Technology has vastly improved the machines that we use in the medical world today. They help us live longer and healthier lives. Haraway then goes on to describe a cyborg as a âcreature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labour, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity.â She also breaks down three boundaries which allows her reasoning for cyborgs possible. First she talks about the boundaries between animals and humans and how there is no clear boundary, but more of an integration in their relationship. The second boundary she talks about is between organisms and machine, and how machines can mock human behavior. The last boundary that Haraway discusses is the boundary between physical and nonphysical. All these boundaries have been broken down which make technology seem more lifelike and humans more dull.
In âA Cyborg Manifesto,â by Donna Haraway she explains to us what exactly is a cyborg. A cyborg is a hybrid between a human being and a machine so that mean half human half machine. She explains how the term cyborg is a creature of fiction and social reality. Haraway explains how a cyborg themselves are portrayed today in movies and fiction that itâs a person who is built like a machine, but also human. She points out that this is not the case that cyborg are physically machines and humans and that we are cyborgs in a way that technology is used in our lives. She explains the growth of technology and how we used it today has made us become cyborgs. She goes on to tell us how technology has been relied on by humans and how we always use technology for advances. We use it to survive. Haraway then explains how cyborgs are different from us for example a female has sex and get pregnant with a baby whereas cyborgs can have sex and enjoy pleasures, but cannot reproduce. She goes into more detail about how there are no boundaries between humans and machines. She first tells us about how animals and humans are in the same kingdom. Human just evolved with language. Then she goes on to explain how machines are being built and advanced where as humans have stayed the same. One thing she mentions is how machines are built as tools, but it has come to the point where machines are starting to feel electromagnetic waves which is a feeling. With this organisms and animals, physical and nonphysical has been changed completely.
In the article “A Cyborg Manifesto” by Donna Haraway shows her views about how she believes all humans are cyborgs and the way we interact with social reality. A cyborg is a combination of organic matter with a form of technology. Global networks are connected to us by the businesses that we have relationships. For example, social media and schools are networks that we deal with every day. There is no way to sever the cord we have with social reality. Social relationships include all of humanity and we need to find a way to take control of the technology to fight back against the networks from controlling us. Everything we do involves some sort of technological factor such as banking, checking bus times on your phone, and social media. An important idea that Haraway discusses in her article is third-way feminism where everyone from different genders and colors is allowed to have equal opportunities. A connection I made with the current article and Nicolas Wade âEarly Voices; The Leap to Languageâ is the evolution of human interaction with technology. In Wadeâs article, he talks about the different evolutionary stepping-stones people had to take in order to communicate. One of the reasons is because people were forced to communicate with other people in their community in order to survive, and going back to Harawayâs view of how cyborgs have to deal with social networks such as school and work to be able to cooperate with other people in society. Also without language that helped make technology cyborgs wouldnât be here in the first place. Being cyborgs has become part of our human nature that takes on different interpretations that change our language.
In Donna Harawayâs, âA Cyborg Manifesto,â she compares cyborgs to humans. She first explains what a cyborg is, saying that itâs a cybernetic organism of a hybrid between machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. She says that we are all cyborgs because our entire existence is mediated by technology. Digital technology is so influential that our lives depend on this technology and this is what makes us cyborgs. Most people today seem to live on their technology, whether it be from their phone or computer, we use it non stop. So if it were taken away from us could we be able to function without it? This is what Harraway is also arguing. She then talks about three boundaries. The first is between animals and humans, evolution has taught us that humans and animals are the same. The second boundary is between man and machine, how they have become more like humans imitating human behavior. This can relate back to Mazlish when he talks about the fourth discontinuity. He discusses how we build machine and expand what they are capable of, while here Haraway discusses how machine has gotten so advanced that it can mimic human behavior. And who has made that come about? Humans. The final boundary that Haraway discusses is between physical and nonphysical. She urges us to leave these forms of oppression. She says that networks of affinity, common goals, and mutual support would give us more control over these technologies.
In the article A Cyborg Manifesto Donna Haraway airs the idea that human beings are cyborgs and the invisible line is thinning the exact definition of what is a cyborg. Generally as portrayed on the big screen, cyborgs are the hybrid marriage of machine and living organisms into an single entity, the manifestation of social reality and science fiction. She reveals how we’re all cyborgs because our entire existence is mediated by digital technology and networks of local capital. Technology is always involved some way, ascribing a two-way relationship in that furthers itself through human intervention and reliance on advances to continues to strengthen our attachment. Global networks broaden the scope of technology’s presence involving institutions heavily situated in it. She urges us to seize these tools that in her formulation are tools of oppression for ourselves to create networks of enmity, giving more control over these technologies. The growth in turn blurs the invisible boundaries that keep humans and cyborg separate. Following the course of evolution technology increases our survival rate, not to mention females (whether human or cyborg) are able to have sexual intercourse. This tears down the supposed wall of physical and nonphysical boundaries of pleasure reserved for only the other half. These digital systems exert control our lives, and have an influence on how we communicate with spoken language and writing. Connected to Ong, Mazlish – that shape our minds and shape ourselves, humans evolve along with technology that changes how we think. Our social reality is permanently linked to a cord making technology seem akin to being alive than an artificial piece of human creation.