Difference between revisions of "A Cyborg Manifesto"

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===Definition===
 
===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" <ref>[Background Information on Haraway and her Manifesto. Background Information on Haraway and her Manifesto - Notes for a Cyborg Manifesto]</ref>.  
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A Cyborg Manifesto is an essay on technology and culture 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 as "an American attempt to reject things technological and return women to nature"<ref>Theresa M. Senft's reading notes for Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto". Background Information on Haraway and her Manifesto. Accessed 02 July 2011. http://www.terrisenft.net/students/readings/manifesto.html</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. With technologies such as sex-change operations and virtual avatars erasing the traditional markers we use to determine gender, the binary starts to collapse and new hybrid forms of sexuality can emerge.
  
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".<ref>Ibid.</ref> "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  
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In A Cyborg Manifesto Haraway defines the cyborg as "a creature 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".<ref>Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York; Routledge, 1991. Pg.150.</ref> In a sense, the cyborg has no origin story in the Western sense - a 'final' irony since the cyborg is also the awful apocalyptic telos of the 'West's' escalating dominations of abstract individuation, an ultimate self untied at last from all dependency, a man in space".<ref>Ibid., Pg. 151.</ref> Indeed, the origin of the term cyborg comes from space travel. A paper from 1960 by Klines and Clyne, who hoped that humans, through a combination of technology, drugs, and space, could surmount the natural and material conditions of humaness in order to ameiloriate the symptoms of everyday reality.
  
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.  
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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 as "a creature of lived social reality", and the fourth is as a "creature of fiction." <ref>Ibid., Pg. 149.</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>Ibid., Pg.150.</ref> which is to say that it is wrapped into our existence as human beings. It has become us, and we are it.  
  
===Haraway's Definition of Cyborg===
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"Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves", writes Harraway. "This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia... It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories. Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess".<ref>Ibid., pp.149-181.</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>
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===The Cyborg Experience===
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"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".<ref>[http://www.terrisenft.net/students/readings/manifesto.html Cyborg changes what counts as experience - Notes for a Cyborg Manifesto]</ref>
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===Cyborg Borders===
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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>[http://www.terrisenft.net/students/readings/manifesto.html The border of the cyborg is an optical illusion. Notes on a Cyborg Manifesto.]</ref>
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===Quotes===
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<blockquote>"The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centres structuring any possibility of historical transformation".</blockquote>
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===Related Reading===
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*[[Donna Haraway]]
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*[[Full text of A Cyborg Manifesto]]
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==References==
 
==References==
 
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Latest revision as of 00:16, 6 November 2011

Definition

A Cyborg Manifesto is an essay on technology and culture 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 as "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. With technologies such as sex-change operations and virtual avatars erasing the traditional markers we use to determine gender, the binary starts to collapse and new hybrid forms of sexuality can emerge.

In A Cyborg Manifesto Haraway defines the cyborg as "a creature 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".[2] In a sense, the cyborg has no origin story in the Western sense - a 'final' irony since the cyborg is also the awful apocalyptic telos of the 'West's' escalating dominations of abstract individuation, an ultimate self untied at last from all dependency, a man in space".[3] Indeed, the origin of the term cyborg comes from space travel. A paper from 1960 by Klines and Clyne, who hoped that humans, through a combination of technology, drugs, and space, could surmount the natural and material conditions of humaness in order to ameiloriate the symptoms of everyday reality.

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 as "a creature of lived social reality", and the fourth is as a "creature of fiction." [4] 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",[5] which is to say that it is wrapped into our existence as human beings. It has become us, and we are it.

"Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves", writes Harraway. "This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia... It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories. Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess".[6]

References

  1. Theresa M. Senft's reading notes for Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto". Background Information on Haraway and her Manifesto. Accessed 02 July 2011. http://www.terrisenft.net/students/readings/manifesto.html
  2. Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York; Routledge, 1991. Pg.150.
  3. Ibid., Pg. 151.
  4. Ibid., Pg. 149.
  5. Ibid., Pg.150.
  6. Ibid., pp.149-181.