A Cyborg Manifesto

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A Cyborg Manifesto is an essay written by Donna Haraway. Haraway began writing

the Manifesto in 1983 to address the Socialist Review request of American socialist feminists
to ponder over the future of socialist feminism in the context of the early Reagan era and the

decline of leftist politics. The first versions of the essay had a strong socialist and European
connection that the Socialist Review East Coast Collective found too controversial to publish.
The Berkeley Socialist ReviewCollective published the essay in 1985 under the editor Jeff
Escoffier.[1] The essay is most well known for being published in Donna Haraway's 1991
book Simians, Cyborgs and Women.
Donna Haraway's essay is an attempt to break away from Oedipal narratives and Christian
origin doctrines like Genesis; the concept of the cyborg is a rejection of rigid boundaries,
notably those separating "human" from "animal" and "human" from "machine." In A Cyborg
Manifesto, she writes: "The cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic
family, this time without the oedipal project. The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of
Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust." [2]
The Manifesto criticizes traditional notions of feminism, particularly feminist focuses on identity
politics, and encouraging instead coalition through affinity. She uses the metaphor of a cyborg
to urge feminists to move beyond the limitations of traditional gender, feminism, and politics.
[2]
Marisa Olson summarized Haraway's thoughts as a belief that there is no distinction between
natural life and artificial man-made machines.[3]

Contents
[hide]

1 Major Points
o

1.1 Issues with Western Patriarchal Tenets

1.2 The Cyborg Way

1.3 Criticism of traditional Feminism

1.4 Call to Action

2 Updates and Revisions

3 Applications of The Cyborg

o

3.1 Patchwork Girl

3.2 "Cyborg Goddesses"

3.3 "Mind Over Matter"

4 Criticism
o

4.1 Sonographic Fetus as Cyborg

5 See also

6 References

7 External links

Major Points[edit]
Haraway begins the Manifesto by explaining three boundary breakdowns since the 20th
Century that have allowed for her hybrid, cyborg myth: the breakdown of boundaries between
human and animal, animal-human and machine, and physical and non-physical. Evolution has
blurred the lines between human and animal; 20th Century machines have made ambiguous
the lines between natural and artificial; and microelectronics and the political invisibility of
cyborgs have confused the lines of physicality.[2]

Issues with Western Patriarchal Tenets[edit]

Haraway highlights the problematic use and justification of Western traditions like patriarchy,
colonialism, essentialism, and naturalism (among others). These traditions in turn allow for the
problematic formations of taxonomies (and identifications of the Other) and what Haraway
explains as "antagonistic dualisms" that order Western discourse. These dualisms, Haraway
states, "have all been systematic to the logics and practices of domination of women, people of
color, nature, workers, animals... all [those] constituted as others." She highlights specific
problematic dualisms of self/other, culture/nature, male/female, civilized/primitive, right/wrong,
truth/illusion, total/partial, God/man (among others). She explains that these dualisms are in
competition with one another, creating paradoxical relations of domination (especially between
the One and the Other). However, high-tech culture provides a challenge to these antagonistic
dualisms.

The Cyborg Way[edit]

Haraway's cyborg theory rejects the notions of essentialism, proposing instead a chimeric,
monstrous world of fusions between animal and machine. Cyborg theory relies on writing as
"the technology of cyborgs," as "cyborg politics is the struggle for language and the struggle
against perfect communication, against the one code that translates all meaning perfectly, the
central dogma of phallogocentrism." Instead, Haraways cyborg calls for a non-essentialized,
material-semiotic metaphor capable of uniting diffuse political coalitions along the lines of
affinity rather than identity. Following Lacanian feminists such as Luce Irigaray, Haraways work
addresses the chasm between feminist discourses and the dominant language of Western
patriarchy. As Haraway explains, grammar is politics by other means, and effective politics
require speaking in the language of domination.[2]
As she details in a chart of the paradigmatic shifts from modern to postmodern epistemology
within the Manifesto, the unified human subject of identity has shifted to the hybridized
posthuman of technoscience, from representation to simulation, bourgeois novel to
science fiction, reproduction to replication, and white capitalist patriarchy to informatics
of domination.[2] While Haraways ironic dream of a common language is inspired by
Irigarays argument for a discourse other than patriarchy, she rejects Irigarays essentializing
construction of woman-as-not-male to argue for a linguistic community of situated, partial
knowledges in which no one is innocent.

Criticism of traditional Feminism[edit]

Haraway takes issue with some traditional feminists who seek to place women above men,
reflected in statements describing how "women more than men somehow sustain daily life, and
so have a privileged epistemological position potentially." The views of traditional feminism
operate under the totalizing assumptions that all men are one way, and women another,

whereas "a cyborg theory of wholes and parts," does not desire to explain things in total theory.
Haraway suggests that feminists should move beyond naturalism and essentialism, criticizing
feminist tactics as "identity politic" that victimize those excluded, and she proposes that it is
better strategically to confuse identities.[2]
To counteract the essentializing and anachronistic rhetoric of spiritual ecofeminists, who were
fighting patriarchy with modernist constructions of female-as-nature and earth mothers,
Haraway employs the cyborg to refigure feminism into cybernetic code.

Call to Action[edit]
Haraway calls for a revision of the concept of gender, moving away from Western patriarchal
essentialism and toward "the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender,"
stating that "Cyborgs might consider more seriously the partial, fluid, sometimes aspect of sex
and sexual embodiment. Gender might not be global identity after all, even if it has profound
historical breadth and depth."[2]
Haraway also calls for a reconstruction of identity, no longer dictated by naturalism
and taxonomy but instead by affinity, wherein individuals can construct their own groups by
choice. In this way, groups may construct a "post-modernist identity out of otherness,
difference, and specificity" as a way to counter Western traditions of exclusive identification.

Updates and Revisions[edit]

Although Haraway's metaphor of the cyborg has been labelled as a post-gender statement,
Haraway has clarified her stance on post-genderism in recent interviews.[1] She acknowledges
that her argument in the Manifesto seeks to challenge the necessity for categorization of
gender, but does not correlate this argument to post-genderism. She clarifies this distinction
because post-genderism is often associated with the discourse of the utopian concept of being
beyond masculinity and femininity. Haraway notes that gender constructs are still prevalent and
meaningful, but are troublesome and should therefore be eliminated as categories for identity.[1]

Applications of The Cyborg[edit]

Although Donna Haraway intended her concept of the cyborg to be a feminist critique, she
acknowledges that other scholars and popular media have taken her concept and applied it to
different contexts. Haraway is aware and receptive of the different uses of her concept of the
cyborg, but admits "very few people are taking what I consider all of its parts". [1] Wired
Magazine over looked the feminist theory of the cyborg and instead used it to make a more
literal commentary about the enmeshment of humans and technology.[4] Despite this, Haraway
also recognizes that new feminist scholars "embrace and use the cyborg of the manifesto to do
what they want for their own purposes".[1]

Patchwork Girl[edit]

Shelley Jackson, author of Patchwork Girl.

"Patchwork Girl's thematic focus on the connections between monstrosity, subjectivity, and new
reproductive technologies is apparent from its very first page, when readers, or users, open the
hypertext to find a picture of a scared and naked female body sewn together with a single
dotted line...Readers enter the text by clicking on this body and following its 'limbs' or links to
different sections of the text."[5] The Patchwork Girl, the aborted female monster created
by Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein, or The Modern
Prometheus, is an aberrant and monstrous creature that is "part male, part female, part animal,
175 years old, and 'razed' up through hypertext technology."[5] The monster, following her
destruction by Victor, is sewn back together by Mary Shelleyherself, while simultaneously
becoming Mary's lover; she is thus, "a cyborg who is queer, dis-proportioned, and visibly
scarred. She both facilitates and undermines preoccupations with the benefits and dangers of
reproductive technologies by embracing all of the monstrosities that reproductive/fetal
screenings are imagined to 'catch' and one day prevent." [5] The Patchwork Girl embraces
Haraway's conception of a cybernetic posthuman being in both her physical multiplicity and her
challenge towards "the images and fantasies sustaining reproductive politics." [5]

"Cyborg Goddesses"[edit]
Turkish critical scholar Leman Giresunlu uses Haraway's cyborg as framework to examine
current science fiction movies such as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Resident Evil in her essay
"Cyborg Goddesses: The Mainframe Revisited".[6] In this essay, she explores how her new
concept of thecyborg goddess, a female figure "capable of inflicting pain and pleasure
simultaneously", can be used to make sense of how female representation is shifting towards a
more multidimensional stance. Giresunlu builds from Haraway's cyborg because the cyborg
goddess goes beyond "offering a way out from [the] duality" and instead provides how
spirituality and technology work together to form a complex and more accurate representation
of women.[6]

"Mind Over Matter"[edit]

In her essay "Mind Over Matter: Mental Evolution and Physical Devolution in The Incredible
Shrinking Man", American critical scholar Ruthellen Cunnally uses Haraway's cyborg to help
make sense of how Robert Scott Carey, the protagonist of The Incredible Shrinking Man,
transforms into a cyborg in the midst of a metaphor of cold war politics in his home. As Robert
continues to shrink, the gendered power dynamic between him and his wife Louise shifts from

"the realm of husband/wife into the mode of mother/son".[7] When Robert finds himself lost in
the feminine space of the basement, an area of the house that was reserved for Louise's
domestic duties of sewing and washing, he is forced to fight for his life and reclaim his
masculinity. Although he is able to conquer some of his foes and regain his "manhood", the
gender lines do not become established again because there is no one to share and
implement the gendered power structure with. Robert's transformation presents "an existence
in which acceptance and meaning are released from the limitations of patriarchal dualisms",
which aligns with Haraway's cyborg.[7]

Criticism[edit]
Traditional feminists have criticized the Manifesto as antifeminist because it refutes any
commonalities of the female experience.[1] In theManifesto, Haraway writes "there is nothing
about being 'female' that naturally binds women", which goes against a defining characteristic
of traditional feminism that calls women to join together in order to advocate for members of
their gender.[2]
Similar to the criticism for her book Primate Vision, her complex and ironic writing style is
another characteristic that draws criticism.[8] Haraway acknowledges that her writing style, in
particular her use of ironic metaphor, can be difficult to understand. It is a challenging rhetorical
device to understand because it resides in privilege and can only be comprehended by people
of a privileged background with similar experiences.[1]

Sonographic Fetus as Cyborg[edit]

Scholar Marilyn Maness Mehaffy notes that the "sonographic fetus is in many ways the
ultimate cyborg in that it is 'created' in a space of virtuality that straddles the conventional
boundary between an organic body and a digital text."[9] Yet it is this cyborg that presents a limit
to Haraway's posthuman theory. The sonographic fetus, as posited by scholar Heather Latimer,
"is publicly envisioned as both independent of [its mother's] body and as independent of the
sonographic equipment used to read this body. We know that fetal images are depictions, yet
the sonogram invokes a documentary-like access to fetuses that makes it easy to ignore this,
which in turn can limit the authority and agency of pregnant women."[5] In positioning the fetus
as independent, and consequently oppositional, to the pregnant mother, these reproductive
technologies "reinscribe stable meanings to the human/machine dualism they supposedly
disrupt."[5] As Valerie Hartouni argues, "most reproductive technologies have assimilated into
the 'order of nature'"[10] making Haraway's vision of a regenerative species, unrestricted by
heteronormative conceptions of reproduction, unattainable in the sonographic fetus.

See also[edit]

Postgenderism

References[edit]
1.

^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g Haraway, Donna (2004). The Haraway Reader.

Routledge. pp. 321341. ISBN 0-415-96688-4.

2.

^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h Full text of the article Cyborg Manifesto (an

archived copy, in the Wayback Machine). It is the full text of the
article: Haraway, Donna Jeanne(1991). "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science,
Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth

Century". Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature.

Routledge. ISBN 0415903866.
3.

Jump up^ Olson, Marisa (November 21, 2008). "Viva Cyborg Theory
- Editorial". Rizome. Retrieved 20 March 2013.

4.

Jump up^ Kunzru, Hari. "You Are Cyborg". Retrieved 25 April 2014.

5.

^ Jump up to:a b c d e f Latimer, Heather. "Reproductive Technologies,

Fetal Icons, and Genetic Freaks: Shelley Jacksons Patchwork Girl and the
Limits and Possibilities of Donna Haraways Cyborg." Modern Fiction
Studies 57.2 (2011): 318-335.

6.

^ Jump up to:a b Giresunlu, Leman (2009). "Cyborg Goddesses: The

Mainframe Revisited". At the Interface / Probing the Boundaries: 157187.

7.

^ Jump up to:a b Cunnally, Ruthellen (March 2013). "Mind Over Matter:

Mental Evolution and Physical Devolution in The Incredible Shrinking
Man". Journal of Popular Film and Television 41: 2
9. doi:10.1080/01956051.2012.674070.

8.

Jump up^ Hamner, M. Gail. "The Work of Love: Feminist Politics and
the Injunction to Love." Opting for the Margins: Postmodernity and
Liberation in Christian Theology. Joerg Rieger, ed. Oxford University Press.
2003.

9.

Jump up^ Mehaffy, Marilyn Maness. "Fetal attractions: the limit of

cyborg theory."Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 29.2 (2000):
177-194.

10.

Jump up^ Hartouni, Valerie. Cultural Conceptions: On Reproductive

Technologies and the Remaking of Life. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P,
1997.

External links[edit]

A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late

Twentieth Century - full text
Categories:
Feminist theory

Gender studies

Postmodern feminism

Donna J. Haraway > Quotes

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/666524.Donna_J_Haraway
Grammar is politics by other means.
Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
tags: feminism, gender, grammar, linguistics, politics

Cyborg writing must not be about the Fall, the imagination of a once-upon-a-time wholeness
before language, before writing, before Man. Cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not
on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that
marked them as other.
Donna J. Haraway
By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and
fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs.
Donna J. Haraway
Consciousness of exclusion through naming is acute. Identities seem contradictory, partial,
and strategic.
Donna J. Haraway
The cyborg is 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.
Donna J. Haraway
Cyborgs are not reverent; they do not re-member the cosmos. They are wary of holism, but
needy for connection- they seem to have a natural feel for united front politics, but without the
vanguard party. The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate
offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But
illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins.
Donna J. Haraway
From this point of view, science - the real game in town - is rhetoric, a series of efforts to
persuade relevant social actors that one's manufactured knowledge is a route to a desired form
of very objective power.
Donna J. Haraway
tags: feminism, objectivity, partial-perspective, rhetoric, science-studies, situated-knowledge, social-constructionism,truth

The cyborg is a kind of disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and personal
self. This is the self feminists must code.
Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs And Women The Reinvention Of Nature

Late twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between
natural and art)ficial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other
distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly

lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert.

Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
I am making an argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality and
as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings. Michael Foucault's.
biopolitics is a flaccid premonition of cyborg politics, a very open field.
Donna J. Haraway
Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about
the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true.
Irony is about humour an serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method,
one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism.
Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
tags: epistemology, feminism, irony, linguistics, ontology, politcs