A Cyborg Manifesto
Definition
A Cyborg Manifesto was a keystone in the development of Cyborg Studies. It was originally written by Donna Haraway in 1986 and later published in 1991. There was much going on at that time, namely "Ronald Reagan's so-called "Star Wars" defense system. The C3I, command-control-communication-intelligence, was an $84 billion item in 1984's US defense budget" [1].
In order to understand where Haraway was coming from in writing the Cyborg Manifesto, one must understand that the "Goddess feminism" movement was on the table. The Goddess feminimism movement was "an American attempt to reject things technological and return women to nature".[2] "Haraway saw this movement...as reactionary rather than progressive", in the sense that it wouldn't push anything forward. The idea of a cyborg is a free-ing, unlimited figure in her essay, suggesting that women would not be unequal but hybrids in association with technology, and that it would allow them to
If much of feminist studies deal with the concept of the body, then A Cyborg Manifesto proposes a new body, that of machine and human, a co-created technosocial assemblage with the capability of transcending the polarizing binary notions of gender. It is an empowering essay written from a scientific view. This aspect of the essay makes it very different from other feminist writing. Rather, it is cyborgian writing.
Haraway's Definition of Cyborg
Haraway defines the cyborg in four different ways in her essay. "The first is as a "cybernetic organism." The second is as "a hybrid of machine and organism." The third is as "a creature of lived social reality", and the fourth is as a "creature of fiction." "[3]
The Cyborg Experience
"Haraway argues that in philosophical terms, there is no real space between "lived social reality" and "fiction", because one category is constantly defining and refining the other. Haraway points out how feminists have deployed the notion of "women's experience" using it both as "fiction and a fact of the most crucial, political kind." In a similar way, Haraway argues, the cyborg will "change what counts as experience" for women in the late twentieth century".[4]
Cyborg Borders
Haraway points out that "the border of the cyborg is an optical illusion", and that "the struggle to define and control the cyborg amounts to a border war, Haraway argues. Ironically enough, she adds, this war is fought a terrain that is largely an "optical illusion": the space between science fiction and today's fact. Anyone who believes cyborgs are things of the future is mistaken. Modern medicine is full of cyborgs already, Haraway points out, as is modern reproduction, manufacturing and modern warfare. In short, writes Haraway, "we are cyborgs", whether we know it or not, if only because it is the cyborg which "is our ontology, it gives us our politics".</ref>The border of the cyborg is an optical illusion. Notes on a Cyborg Manifesto.</ref>
Quotes
"The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centres structuring any possibility of historical transformation".
Related Reading
References
- ↑ [Background Information on Haraway and her Manifesto. Background Information on Haraway and her Manifesto - Notes for a Cyborg Manifesto]
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Definition of a Cyborg - Notes for a Cyborg Manifesto
- ↑ Cyborg changes what counts as experience - Notes for a Cyborg Manifesto
