Difference between revisions of "A Cyborg Manifesto"

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===Definition===
 
===Definition===
"A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" was a groundbreaking essay written by Donna Haraway in 1986. The essay explores the concept of the cyborg and it's ramifications for the future, and effectively inaugurating the academic study of cyborgs. The manifesto uses gender as its central example in explaining the power of the cyborg. Haraway attacks the "goddess feminism" movement ("an American attempt to reject things technological and return women to nature"<ref>[Background Information on Haraway and her Manifesto. Background Information on Haraway and her Manifesto - Notes for a Cyborg Manifesto]</ref>) and instead offers the model of the cybernetic woman: that of machine and human, a co-created techno-social assemblage with the capability of transcending the polarizing binary notions of gender. Technologies such as sex-change operations and virtual avatars undermine the traditional symbols by which we use to determine gender, thus destabilizing the binary by which we traditionally understand gender.  
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A Cyborg Manifesto was a groundbreaking essay written by Donna Haraway in 1986. The essay explores the concept of the cyborg and it's ramifications for the future, and effectively inaugurating the academic study of cyborgs. The manifesto uses gender as its central example in explaining the power of the cyborg. Haraway attacks the "goddess feminism" movement ("an American attempt to reject things technological and return women to nature"<ref>[Background Information on Haraway and her Manifesto. Background Information on Haraway and her Manifesto - Notes for a Cyborg Manifesto]</ref>) and instead offers the model of the cybernetic woman: that of machine and human, a co-created techno-social assemblage with the capability of transcending the polarizing binary notions of gender. Technologies such as sex-change operations and virtual avatars undermine the traditional symbols by which we use to determine gender, thus destabilizing the binary by which we traditionally understand gender.  
  
 
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." <ref>[http://www.terrisenft.net/students/readings/manifesto.html Definition of a Cyborg - Notes for a Cyborg Manifesto]</ref>  
 
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." <ref>[http://www.terrisenft.net/students/readings/manifesto.html Definition of a Cyborg - Notes for a Cyborg Manifesto]</ref>  
  
===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". Ironically enough, she adds, this war is fought on 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, as is modern reproduction, manufacturing and modern warfare. In short, "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>[http://www.terrisenft.net/students/readings/manifesto.html The border of the cyborg is an optical illusion. Notes on a Cyborg Manifesto.]</ref>
 
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". Ironically enough, she adds, this war is fought on 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, as is modern reproduction, manufacturing and modern warfare. In short, "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>[http://www.terrisenft.net/students/readings/manifesto.html The border of the cyborg is an optical illusion. Notes on a Cyborg Manifesto.]</ref>
 
In the essay Haraway makes a table of how different concepts will shift in our cyborg future:
 
 
Representation                          Simulation
 
Bourgeois novel, realism            Science fiction, postmodernism
 
Organism                                  Biotic Component
 
Depth, integrity                          Surface, boundary
 
Heat                                        Noise
 
Biology as clinical practice          Biology as inscription
 
Physiology                                Communications engineering
 
Small group                              Subsystem
 
Perfection                                Optimization
 
Eugenics                                  Population Control
 
Decadence, Magic Mountain        Obsolescence, Future Shock
 
Hygiene                                    Stress Management
 
Microbiology, tuberculosis          Immunology, AIDS
 
Organic division of labour          Ergonomics/cybernetics of labour
 
Functional specialization            Modular construction
 
Reproduction                            Replication
 
Organic sex role specialization    Optimal genetic strategies
 
Bioogical determinism                Evolutionary inertia, constraints
 
Community ecology                  Ecosystem
 
Racial chain of being                  Neo-imperialism, United Nations humanism
 
Scientific management in home/factory Global factory/Electronic cottage
 
Family/Market/Factory Women in the Integrated Circuit
 
Family wage Comparable worth
 
Public/Private Cyborg citizenship
 
Nature/Culture fields of difference
 
Co-operation Communicatins enhancemenet
 
Freud Lacan
 
Sex Genetic engineering
 
labour Robotics
 
Mind Artificial Intelligence
 
Second World War Star Wars
 
White Capitalist Patriarchy Informatics of Domination
 
 
<blockquote>"The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centres structuring any possibility of historical transformation".</blockquote>
 
 
===Related Reading===
 
*[[Donna Haraway]]
 
*[[Full text of A Cyborg Manifesto]]
 
  
 
==References==
 
==References==

Revision as of 02:44, 3 July 2011

Definition

A Cyborg Manifesto was a groundbreaking essay written by Donna Haraway in 1986. The essay explores the concept of the cyborg and it's ramifications for the future, and effectively inaugurating the academic study of cyborgs. The manifesto uses gender as its central example in explaining the power of the cyborg. Haraway attacks the "goddess feminism" movement ("an American attempt to reject things technological and return women to nature"[1]) and instead offers the model of the cybernetic woman: that of machine and human, a co-created techno-social assemblage with the capability of transcending the polarizing binary notions of gender. Technologies such as sex-change operations and virtual avatars undermine the traditional symbols by which we use to determine gender, thus destabilizing the binary by which we traditionally understand gender.

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." [2]

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". Ironically enough, she adds, this war is fought on 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, as is modern reproduction, manufacturing and modern warfare. In short, "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".[3]

References

  1. [Background Information on Haraway and her Manifesto. Background Information on Haraway and her Manifesto - Notes for a Cyborg Manifesto]
  2. Definition of a Cyborg - Notes for a Cyborg Manifesto
  3. The border of the cyborg is an optical illusion. Notes on a Cyborg Manifesto.