Before our next class, post a comment to this blog post with at least 250 words summarizing your reading and today’s lecture on Donna Haraway’s “The Cyborg Manifesto.”
For our next class: Email your research project proposal to me as a Word docx file attachment before class. Read N. Katherine Hayles’ “Toward Embodied Virtuality.” We will begin class with a review of the previous readings so make sure you’re there on-time to get those notes before we move on to discussing Hayles’ work.
Donna Haraway was born in 1944 and is a distinguished professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. While in Colorado College, she tripled majored in zoology, philosophy and literature. She received her Ph. D in biology specializing in development biology at Yale University. In her essay âCyborg Manifestoâ which was published in 1984, talks about how we are all cyborgs and mentions a lot about gender, politics, and feminism. In the beginning of her essay she defines a cyborg as âa cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is livid social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction.â She also talks about three crucial boundary breakdowns which are human and animal, animal-human and machine, and physical and non-physical. She goes into describing how each boundary has been breached. With the first one, human and animal, she mentions that there are movements for animal rights and how they should have equal rights. The second breach is animal-human and machine. She is saying that machines are becoming more human, more lifelike and more powerful. The third breach, physical and non-physical, she describes how machines are created of sunshine, they have light. We can see the light, but we cannot touch it. Haraway later in her essay is trying to get everyone to work together and to put all our differences aside. We should be helping one another because when we do we can make some progress. In her essay she uses a painting called âCyborgâ that was painted by Lynn Randolph and gave our interpretations of it in class. In the painting we can see that there is a circuit board attached to the woman and that she seems to be using what looks like a typewriter or keyboard. Itâs showing us how we are becoming a cyborg and how the cyborg looks like sheâs in control from the way she is positioned. She is in the center overlooking and in control.
Donna Haraway is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Donna played an essential role based on the history of consciousness and feminist. Her works are interdiscipline, which she has three different types of major. In her article “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” she mentioned “cyborg.” Cyborg defines a combination of an organism and the machine, creation of fiction and the reality; it includes human or other species. We are discontinuous from everything else; we are all cyborgs, we are part of the modern circuit of humanity. It brings machine and animals with social relationships. Cyborg is inclusive of gender, species, and sexuality. Machines are starting to become more human with more accurate senses. There is a term mentioned by Donna, which is the Actor-network theory. It comes from French philosopher. It’s a social theory rather than describe itself. Donna observes that we are all the same, we can help others to be more efficient and more productive. She also uses emblematic characters uncle mouse which is the first cyborg that shares lots of genuine and characteristics to the human. Thomas.S.Kuhn is the physicist; he founds instead of science evolves, it gives a paradigm shift. Science paradigm is a consent upon the work, and this work correlates to Donna Haraway. In the third way, Donna beings feminism into a next stop, she resents feminist by using their identity as a tool to defend politics. Donna believes that humanity has the fluidity, which is defined as cyborg ultimately.
Donna Haraway is a professor emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was a triple major in Zoology, Philosophy and Literature. She then got her PhD at Yale, and her dissertation was heavily influenced by Thomas Kuhnâs book, âThe Structure of Scientific Revolutionsâ. We discussed in class that Kuhnâs book dispelled the firmly held paradigm that advances in science and technology moved very slowly. He instead proposed that science and technology moves ahead by big breaks, or paradigm shifts; Dr. Haraway also subscribes to this theory.
There are two main thoughts that Dr. Haraway expresses to us in âA Cyborg Manifesto.â She wants us to realize that the cyborg is a social-politically enabling subject and that of utmost importance is our social relations, especially between humans and nonhumans (animals). She rejects the notion that we as humans are enlightened, that is: special, having agency over our minds and bodies, above other creatures and technology. The Age of Enlightenment was a modernist movement; Dr. Haraway was a post-modern thinker, which meant that she, as well as her cyborg, reject the purification of these moderns. Moderns seek to divide and elevate humans; Dr. Haraway sought to connect with the modern technological world by illustrating connectivity. In addition to her beliefs on cyborgs, Haraway was a 3rd wave feminist. She rejected the mid-20th century feminist movement because it wasnât inclusive; it essentially argued for the rights of middle-class white women, whilst leaving all other classes and ethnicities out. While she acknowledges we are all different, she firmly believes in inclusiveness and that we can draw strength from our differences. Her cyborg rejects labels that seek to divide such as exist in sexuality, socio-economic status and ethnicity. Her cyborg is an emblem of affinity (connection) across these groups.
Her cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction, and social reality is lived social relations. Social reality is our most important political construction. She is trying to help us see the construct as it is. She believes that we are all cyborgs because we are all part of the modern circuit made possible by the late capitalism. Large corporations control everything we have and do, and weâre a part of that machine. We are all enmeshed into the circuit as well as with each other in networks- this is emblematized in the artwork on the cover showing animal, woman and computers entwined with the universe. Some things we can control, but most we cannot. She wants us to try and work together to take back some of this control for our benefit.
Because we really canât function outside of this construct of capitalism, Haraway says that we should embrace the image of the cyborg and the technology that makes us âcyborgsâ. We should appropriate these tools and technologies to use them for our own means and ends, tools that might otherwise oppress us. We may do this by developing affinity networks. To that end, she employs Bruno Latourâs philosophy of âactor network theoryâ, or ANT. ANT basically focuses on the relationships of an entire ecosystem and how it can accomplish a task, rather than focusing on the accomplishments of the individual. ANT looks at these relationships holistically in order to see how they are connected. Essentially, Dr. Haraway is saying that we as humans are connected to technology and thus have become cyborgs; further, we are connected to animals as partners. And so to include and help one another, not consider ourselves elite and separate, will strengthen us as individuals as well as a whole.
TO: Professor Dr. Jason W. Ellis
FROM: Ronald C. Hinds
DATE: March 06, 2018
SUBJECT: A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism
in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature.
Donna Haraway, a distinguished American Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States, is a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies. Her 1985 essay, âA Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in âSimians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Natureâ is simply known as The Cyborg Manifesto. The Cyborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary between human and animal transgresses. She posits that a cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creation of fiction. Cybernetics is the science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things. Social reality may be considered as consisting of the accepted social tenets of a community, involving thereby stable laws and social representations.
Haraway says âCyborgs are not reverent; they seem to have a natural feel for united front politics, but without the vanguard party.â None other than Vladimir I. Lenin, a leader of the successful Russian Revolution, argued for and, with the Bolsheviks, built a revolutionary vanguard party to lead the working class to power in the 1917 revolution. The vanguard party is key component, to among other things, organize the working class as a fighting unit. The working class seized power from the Russian Czar. If one is serious about changing society and forging a new way of life there is no shortcut so I disagree with Harawayâs perspective in the Cyborg Manifesto. The success of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 can be measured by the working class taking power. Haraway, in the Cyborg Manifesto, never once mentions the working class and the potential power that it has. When this power is unleashed and a small example is the strike which the transit workers executed in December 2005 where the union members defied the slave Taylor Law, which the city rulers use to prevent work stoppages, for three (3) days.
According to Alyssa Battistoni, contributor at Jacobin and a PhD student in political science at Yale University, in her essay entitled, âMonstrous, Duplicated and Potent,âHarawayâs manifesto offered a new politics for this economy. The journal Jacobin which was launched by the Democratic Socialist of America, or DSA, includes a broad spectrum of leftist and reformist contributors DSA vice-chair Bhaskar Sunkara, founder and editor of Jacobin, claims that Jacobin offers a âMarxist analysis,â while denouncing leftist âcraziesâ and making clear that heâd ârather engage with the mass mainstream of U.S. liberalismâ (Boston Review, 18 December 2012). Indeed, Sunkara has been praised by MSNBC Democratic Party media hack Chris Hayes for his âamazing magazine.â
Battistoni writes, âActing as isolated individuals leads nowhere, but the effort to act collectively cannot leave difference aside. Women of color, Haraway suggested, following Chela Sandoval, (an associate professor of Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, noted theorist of post-colonial and third world feminism and author of âMethodology of the Oppressedâ), could not rely on the stability of either category; they might lead the way in forging a new, nonessential unity based on affinity rather than identity.âHarawayâs âcyborgian idealâ addresses the pitfalls inherent in either alternative and focuses instead upon the discarding of both identity and affinity for the greater good of the goal itself at hand; one that unites, empowers and benefits all concerned in a battle to be won. The decided outcome supersedes all individual as well as group needs, which might otherwise clash in ways that an involved individual as well as group needs, which might seem to be a conflict of interest or within that framework counterproductive, yet, ultimately, serves them anyway.
The cyborg has âno truckâ or no dealings with âunalienated labor.â This seems to be a double negative Karl Marx keenly understood that technology can emancipate humanity by vastly increasing its control over nature, creating wealth, conquering hunger and disease and potentially freeing mankind from poverty as well as alienated labor. âKarl Marx first entered politics in 1837 as part of a radical intellectual circle called the Left Hegelians or Young Hegelians. The philosophy, economics and politics that he eventually embraced would form the basis of that which became known as Marxism. Marx described the economic tendencies within capitalism which inevitably lead to imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. Marxâs treatise on estranged labor maintains that workers are alienated from the products of their labor. He posits that the worker becomes poorer with the work he produces. In other words the more the worker produces, the less the worker has. Another aspect of this alienation is that labor is forced; it does not belong to the worker but to another. The worker, with his labor, generates the wealth. According to Marxâs view, the rapid increase of machinery in the process of capitalist production further alienates labor from the process and products of commodity production.
Marx held that the class structure of society informs how technology is developed. Under capitalism, technology influences the structure of society and politics for the benefit of the ruling class and those who own the means of production. Marxâs goal of communism is the creation of an egalitarian society of material abundance. Such a classless society is part of a dialectical and revolutionary process. Such a society can only be achieved through the overcoming of economic scarcity by raising the level of production through progressive development of science and technology. This is laid out in Marx and Engelâs âCommunist Manifestoâ written in 1847-48.
Marx wanted to see the withering away of all state. Marx stood for a different type of society; the dictatorship of the proletariat as a stage towards a classless communist society of abundance. This would require an extraordinarily high level of technology. His slogan was âworkers of the world unite!â A planned economy, which means the working class raising the level of its organization to the point where it is able to organize production proved to be superior to the old order.
A Marxist inspired, internationally planned economy for example is more rational than its capitalist counterpart and humanity can derive the benefits thereof. This would seem to better parallel Harawayâs cyborg approach. The resources of the world are colossal but much of it is in the hands of too few. I argue for Marxâs view on private property. Marx grasped the intrinsic connection between private property, greed, the separation of labor, and capital and landed property. Workers labor and the resulting products that the workers produce belong to the capitalist. The greater the productivity of labor with the utilization of industrial technology, the greater the profits seized by the capitalist. These profits are not socially distributed in order to eliminate scarcity and to generally raise the material and cultural level of society. Instead of improving the material well being of the collective, modern technology is used to increase social misery, in the forms of poverty, homelessness, social pathology and oppression.
Battistoni talks about Haraway remaining as invaluable for âunderstanding that primates, science fiction, and sex are central to politics,â but Harawayâs view of the state is utopian at least. A Marxist definition of state is imbued with what Lenin referred to as âarmed bodies of men;â with this conception he includes the police, correction officers, and the bossesâ courts. A Marxist would not be for the â[winning] over of the state or to âmerely disarm it,â as espoused by Haraway. A Marxist is for the smashing of the state not for reforming it. Battisoni talks about Harawayâs âgenuine desire to changeâ the world. To me the totality of Harawayâs liberal worldview means only more of the same.
Donna Haraway juxtaposes the motives of Mary Shelleyâs Frankenstein Monster with those of a cyborg, denoting the latterâs disinclination to satisfy a more humanly traditional expectation of the life constructs and milestones, which are the hallmarks of a purely human existence. Harawayâs analogy would be better served by the opposing parallel of an android, rather than a cyborg, since a cyborg still consists of human biological material that is paired or âsingularizedâ with otherwise lifeless, artificial, electronic and servo-mechanical parts. An android is completely artificial insomuch as it is at least initially entirely the creation of its human manufacturer and yet devoid of human tissue. It nevertheless is, through its artificial intelligence or AI governed algorithm, self-aware and self motivated.
Haraway puts the presumption upon the mythical cyborg of its actual agenda, being devoid of identity and affinity politics, and then adds âunalienated laborâ to its list of topical indifference. Yet she conversely analogizes this state of cyborgian detachment with the Livermore Action Group. On the surface, this seems applicable because of the cyborgian eschewment of special interest loyalty in favor of disarming the state but therein lies the rub: With no vanguard party, gender, sexual, national, cultural, social, religious, class or other bias, who is to say what the cyborgâs goal is and why? Apparently, only Haraway herself, although she does admit to as much by identifying her cyborg myth as a personal and idealistic fantasy. Casting its application to the real world under a feminist-socialist, or otherwise Marxist, veneer might appear to simply put aside the aforementioned loyalties in exchange for a more unified one but, being a Utopian fantasy, fails to address the inevitable divisions invoked by any group effort, no matter how otherwise blind to difference, to achieve its objective.
References
Battistoni, A. (2017) âMonstrous, Duplicated, Potentâ on Donna Haraway
https://nplusonemag.com/issue-28/reviews/monstrous-duplicated-potent/Downloaded on 6 March 2018.
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Estranged Labour. Karl Marx.
The Communist Manifesto. Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels. Published by Penguin Books Ltd., in Great Britain, 1967.
Internet Sources
Marxism and Science â Introduction
http://www.allaboutworldview.org/marxism-and-science.html. Downloaded on October 21, 2106.
Keywords
Cybernetics, cyborg, feminism, Marxism, utopian, vanguard party, working class
Donna Haraway is a professor emerita in the history of consciousness and feminist studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. During her years as a student at Colorado college, she triple majored in philosophy, zoology, and literature and has a accomplished background of very interdisciplinary work. The artwork displayed in her essay is called âCyborgâ by Lynn Randolph. This artwork is very much related to her argument how we are all cyborgs. She defines cyborg as a creature of real life and a creature of fiction, how cyborg bring together a new subject, machine and animal. Cyborgs are inclusive of gender, sexual orientation, species and an symbol of affinity. The ANT or actor-network theory comes from the French philosopher Bruno Latour and focuses on affinity, networks and individual identity, describing a social and natural phenomena. Instead of giving an individual the entire credit for an outcome, ANT studies the relationships of the people who were involved the process, what may have influenced the individual to create such outcome, and maybe even the government during the time and how it has affected the outcome. ANT is a holistic approach of studying technological development and sees the network as more important than the individual. Haraway points out how we are not all alike, and how we can draw strength from our differences. Through affinity networks, by embracing differences, we can find respect, connections and mutual support. We must embrace the technology that makes us cyborgs, whether that be a pair of glasses that helps us to see better or medications that keep us alive so we can use those tools to serve us. Otherwise, it can seem as if we were being oppressed or dominated by technology.
Donna Haraway is an interdisciplinary Professor Emerita at the University of California in Santa Cruz. As part of the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department, Haraway wrote âThe Cyborg Manifestoâ in 1985 and has since revised the work in 1991. She includes interesting art that follows the definition of cyborg. A cyborg was defined as a cybernetic organism. It is a combination of machine and organism. Furthermore, it is a creature of social reality fiction creation. A cyborg ultimately is meant to capture our imagination.
Haraway includes art by Lynn Randolph. This painting captures the scientific creation of the universe, Pyramids of Giza and an open desert. In addition, the main focus is a woman as a machine, using a typewriter with an animal resembling a lioness over her head. Lioness in the animal world are the meal providers as well as protectors of lions. It is clear why the art would include a lioness to help coneys Marxist feminist ideas Haraway wants to present. The painting pulls the reader in to visualize the cyborg alongside the idea machine and animal word are connected through social relationships.
Haraway writing elaborates on class relations of feminism and working class as an affinity concept. She explains a boundary difference between humans and animals. She also includes the difference of animal-human and machine and physical and non-physical. She often includes a complex idea spectrum because of her interdisciplinary work including zoology.
An interesting concept noted in class was the Actor-Network Theory created by Bruno Latour. This uses social theory to describe a social phenomenon. This is studied holistically. This means to look at the larger picture. This gives more truth to the interconnectivity of man, animal, and technology. This topic is still confusing because of its complexity and yet I found it fascinating. There is a strength in differences regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation.
A further idea discussed was the waves of feminism. The first wave was about basic rights. The second wave was about gender equality revolution for jobs, finances and marital status. The third wave made its way into political rights. She emphases the respectfulness and equality that should be occurring.
Embracing the idea of cyborg, mankind can change how we use technology. We must not allow it to oppress us for the intended purpose. We have to learn how to use it to benefit our needs. Professor Ellis used an example of a hammer. The intended purpose is to secure nails. However, it can be used to destroy a window. It is up to us to operate it any way we desire.
In conclusion, this reading was complexed with the ideas Haraway presented. This was because she views this topic with different glasses. The last line of her work, âThough both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddessâ, was beautifully written. It made me wonder how she would think about cyborgs today.
Donna J. Haraway is an American Professor who has taught in the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is an author of many books and essays, but none as pertinent as her essay â The Cyborg Manifesto.â In the essay, Haraway discusses how we are in fact cyborgs. When we think of cyborgs, visuals of cybernetic prosthesisâs being adorned to humans or the Terminator movies spring to mind. Our view of cyborgs is still entrenched in the realm of science fiction. We have in fact long crossed into the realm of becoming and being cyborgs. Harawayâs definition of a cyborg is that of a creature of real life and fiction. With cyborgs, there is no discrimination of ethnicity, sex, or class. It is not, as Haraway puts it, a creation whose genesis was born from the Western, male dominated ideal system. Haraway wants cyborgs to one about the inclusion of all, unlike the society we live in; devoid of the prejudices of everything that plagues our world today. An interesting point Haraway raises is that we have become slaves to the very machines we have created. With our ever so increasing reliance on technology, weâve already become cyborgs, yet not the ones Haraway envisions us to become. We should be using these technologies to help others and make their lives better, not just use them for ourselves. An affinity network would be the perfect means to making Harawayâs dreams a reality. A lot of us are so concerned with our own problems and dilemmas, we tend to overlook or flat out ignore others. If we take the time to start looking outward and helping others, our society would improve immensely. With the leaps technology has made our world ,as a whole, will be a better place for all.
A Cyborg Manifesto is an article on innovation and culture composed by Donna Haraway in 1986. The paper investigates the idea of the cyborg and it’s repercussions for the future, and adequately introducing the scholarly investigation of cyborgs. The proclamation utilizes sex as its focal case in clarifying the energy of the cyborg. Haraway assaults the “goddess woman’s rights” development as “an American endeavor to dismiss things mechanical and return ladies to nature âand rather offers the model of the robotic lady: that of machine and human, a co-made techno-social array with the ability of rising above the polarizing twofold thoughts of sexual orientation. With advancements, for example, sex-change tasks and virtual symbols eradicating the conventional markers we use to decide sex, the parallel begins to fall and new half and half types of sexuality can rise. Hardaway characterizes the cyborg in four diverse routes in her paper. The first is as a “robotic living being”, the second is as “a mixture of machine and life form”, the third as “an animal of lived social reality”, and the fourth is as an “animal of fiction.” Hardaway brings up that “the fringe of the cyborg is an optical fantasy”, and that “the battle to characterize and control the cyborg adds up to an outskirt war”. Incidentally enough, she includes, this war is battled on a landscape that is to a great extent an optical dream: the space between sci-fi and the present reality. Any individual who trusts cyborgs are things without bounds is mixed up. Present day pharmaceutical is loaded with cyborgs as of now, as is current propagation, assembling and present-day fighting. To put it plainly, “we are cyborgs”, regardless of whether we know it or not, if simply because it is the cyborg which “is our cosmology, it gives us our politicsâ, which is to state that it is wrapped into our reality as individuals. It has progressed toward becoming us, and we are it.
Jessica L. Roman
ENG 1710
3/12/2018
Donna J. Haraway is a Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California. . Haraway received her Ph.D. in biology from Yale in 1970; her dissertation was heavily influenced by Thomas Kuhnâs work, âThe Structure of Scientific Revolutionsâ. In this popular book, he introduces the term paradigm shift, which is a radical change in assumption or belief that are popularly held. It was mentioned that this is true of all the sciencesâ advancements.
Her 1984 work, âThe Cyborg Manifestoâ, deals heavily with the idea of the cyborg, gender, feminism and politics. She begins her essay by defining a cyborg as, a hybrid of machine and organism. We have discussed this briefly in previous classes, when our experiences are mediated through technology we become a cyborg. In our highly literate and high-technology society, this is inevitable for us all. Even something we may see as simple such as eyeglasses, are a technology that mediate how we experience and perceive the world. Further Haraway explains that a cybernetic organism is a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction and demonstrates that social reality is our most important political construct. Haraway also goes through the three crucial boundary breakdowns which are human and animal, animal-human and machine, and physical and non-physical
Part of the class discussion concerned feminism and its three waves. From a previous course, I understand these waves as follows. First wave feminism took place in the 19th-20th Century and focused on women suffrage, educational rights and the rejection of the idea that women are inferior to men. The second wave happened from the 1950-1980, which focused on womenâs liberation, equal pay and challenged the concept of the nuclear family. The third wave, which began in the 90,âs, and is still happening today. It centered on diversity of women, that there is no universal experience of being a woman, and sought to bring fourth different ideas and cultures. Harraway is among the third wave of feminist. One of the focuses of Harawayâs is affinity networks and inclusivity. She holds that we should appropriate the tools, that would otherwise oppress us and use them for our own means and ends, tools that might otherwise oppress us.
Donna Harawayâs âThe Cyborg Manifesto.â The text opened up with a science fiction nightmare that possibly stems from an average personâs deepest concerns about science, technology, and society. It’s impossible to take into account with advances in medicine, robotics, and AI, they’re moving relentlessly closer to reality. Donna Haraway claimed that when technology works on the body, our thoughts always mingle with intense fascination more than likely because it’s unknown and yearned to be explored.
But there are plenty of question to be posed by the reader and the author, Haraway, herself. Like exactly does the how does technology do this work?
How long will it take to finally arrive?
Haraway conceives of the idea of cyborgs as a reality and that information networks already make us cyborgs. Cyborgs are socially constructed as of machine and organism. Cyborgs tend to live in borderline–a productive space intended for knowledge building. She believes opening borderland is essential to opening and broadening the worldly possibilities. âWorldlyâ relates to what one cares about or connect to and said connection to leads to a multiplicity of other connections and their development.
Haraway uses the image and myth of the cyborg to argue for the construction of oneâs consciousness or responsibility, particularly with respect to newer technology.
Boundaries relate to connection and everything is connected⊠everything in this world is linked and it is crucial to view entities within their network connection.
In todayâs class we talked about Donna Haraway, born in 1934. She was a retired professor from the University of California in Santa Cruz. She focused on the interdisciplinary studies such as philosophy and zoology. She wrote an essay titled, âA cyborg manifesto: science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth centuryâ. In her essay and as discussed in class she raises important topic on cyborg and technology itself. She refers to the cyborg as the socially-politically enabling subject, in other words the way the person is. She talks about the importance of social relations which included to humans and non-humans as well. In her essay she defined cyborg as the âcybernetic organismâ, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as creatures of fiction. She mentions that social reality is lived social relation, that our most important political construction is a word changing fiction.
In class we also discussed that social relations include human and non-human, Haraway by using her emblematic cyborg is inclusive of gender sexuality. In addition, by embracing the image of the cyborg we can appreciate those tools, moreover use them for our purposesâ and needs.
Haraway in her essay tries really hard to show that there is no equality, she wats us all to find and help her come to equality to make domination of others more important. She observed and understood that we arenât all alike. In class we referenced to third way of feminism, that this is what Haraway is doing. Her essay influenced many feministic and science or critical theory parties since it has been published.
Lastly, we looked at the painting that looked like a woman with wolf paws and we tried to determine what is the message behind the painting. Finally, coming to terms it might be some type of a cyborg.
In class we examined the painting of cyborgs and provided our interpretations of what we saw on the image. I personally saw the connection of Mother Nature with technology and how technology is becoming part of us just like nature is. Together with this painting we also discussed Donna Haraway âA Cyborg Manifestoâ where she explains that we are one with technology and nature and we are not a superior creatures. We are just as efficient as other creatures and non-creatures (technology) and thatâs what a cyborg is the unity of all of us as one.
Donna Haraway, born in 1944 is a distinguished professor at the university of California. In Her writing, âa cyborg Manifestoâ shows us how we are all hybrids for cyborgs. She says that a cyborg is a cybernetic organism hybrid and a creature of social reality and fiction. The cyborgs bring man and machine together. The cyborg is also inclusive of gender and provides affinity across modern divide divisions. Even typing up this after class writing summary makes me a cyborg because I am using my computer to do so. Haraway develops two big ideas, the cyborg is a social politically enabling subject and the importance of social relations of human and non-humans. We should look at the bigger picture of things, like when there is a boss of a company. When ever the company produces something, the boss usually gets credit for it, but we must look at it as a whole, the boss did not do everything, it was the workers who did all of the work and they should also get the credit. As these human cyborg hybrids, we are not all alike and with technology slowly dividing us we should set up affinity networks. Affinity networks can help us help each other so we donât become divided. Also because of these affinity networks weâll be using the tools that can oppress us and use them to better us.