A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century – Donna Haraway

by Christopher Smith 

Donna Haraway opens her text, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, with the provocation that the essay is “an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism.”¹She argues she knows no better positioning of her work than with irony among the dominant and suffocating nature of American conservatism. The manifesto is laced with this at times scathing irony for the cultural institutions and norms that make up contemporary society, and her Cyborg –  a term which will be defined later –  plays the role of the antagonist. 

Haraway is a professor in the History of Consciousness Department within the Feminist Studies Department at The University of California, Santa Cruz. A Cyborg Manifesto was first published in 1985, with the cover depicted in Figure 1. In explaining the concept of the Cyborg, it is worth considering the cover illustration which on first glance shows the head of a woman – presumably – with a neutral expression.  On closer examination one discovers the circuit pieces which compose its eyes, ears, mouth and throat. It is the blending of typical visual cues which leads one to believe it is in fact a cyborg: the hairstyling of a mid 80’s woman, combined with circuitry associated with computers. Significantly, the body isn’t shown which serves to put focus on the analytical capacity of the cyborg as opposed to the physical, and also serves to make the image more gender fluid – there is no suggestion of sexual organs, and the cyborg depicted could equally be the standard definition of “male.”

Haraway defines the Cyborg as a “cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.”¹This blending of organic and inorganic is significant. It suggests that each element complements the other, that together they create something stronger than apart. The blending of organic and inorganic is also quite a radical concept, something oft considered in science fiction novels let alone feminist discourse. It is worth noting that Haraway is writing 8 years after the release of the Apple II , widely considered to be the first mass-produced computer, and year after the first Terminator movie; Haraway was writing at a time where the personal computer and the very idea of the cyborg was starting to enter the household and realm of popular culture. Haraway defines the cyborg in contradictory terms, revealing a playful sense of irony, to her the cyborg is “oppositional, utopian, and completely without innocence.”¹The cyborg is the result of what she sees as deepened dualisms for the American left and feminists, and sees the cyborg as a sort of consciousness, leaving open for interpretation how literal the binding of human and machine really is. She also notes that women of colour could be understood as having a cyborg identity – this idea of the “other”.

Harraway goes on to say “there is nothing about being ‘female’ that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as ‘being’ female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices.”¹  This concept of female has resulted in the fragmentation of feminists, and calls for unity along the lines of affinity as opposed to identity; she argues that now more than ever in history is political unity important. She argues that “theory and practice addressed to the social relations of science and technology, including crucially the systems of myth and meanings structuring our imagines. The cyborg is a kind of disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and personal self. This is the self feminists must code.” ¹Here Haraway uses the idea of coding and technology as a way to usurp power. That feminists can turn technology which is being used as a means to control sexuality, identity, and politics by a male patriarchy, on itself. She references Bruno Latour in saying that science and technology provide new sources of power.

Haraway moves on from this section, the Informatics of Domination, to analyzing labour outside the home, in what she refers to as the Homework Economy, borrowing the term from Richard Gordon. Technology is displacing the labour force, and the welfare state, which increases the pressure on women and the labour they provide to households. She names a number of places in what she calls an integrated circuit, where there are no place for women in the network only “geometries of difference and contradiction crucial to women’s cyborg identities”¹, namely: Home, Market, Paid Workplace, State, School, Clinic-Hospital, and Church. In each of these spaces she catalogues the discrimination and oppression to women, brought on by the “informatics of domination.” ¹

She concludes her essay with what she calls a “myth about identity and boundaries”¹. Here she argues that “cyborg politics insist on noise and advocate pollution, rejoicing in the illegitimate fusions of animal and machine.”¹The concept of being One and the other is an important point touched on in this section. Haraway argues that to be one is to have power, and to be other is to be fragmented. It is one of the many dualisms she argues which have been part of the suppression of women.

In a conversation with Cary Wolfe where Haraway reflects on the manifesto, Haraway describes the manifesto as being written out of rage, which “helps her to show how our being, our very fabric, always in extension with technology, is constituted by the relations between capitalism and division.”² Joanna Latimer argues that Haraway opens up an alternate model for dissidence, making “the personal, the social and political explicit … so we can reimagine how every thought is thought, how every research proposal is constructed and every research project is done.”² This view touches on the power of Haraway’s diction. Her use of the imaginary, and the metaphor leaves opens many interpretations, which both give the work a lasting relevance, but also the ability for it to be understood on a multitude of personal levels.

Citations

1. Haraway, Donna. “A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late 20th century.” In The international handbook of virtual learning environments, pp. 117-158. Springer, Dordrecht, 2006.
2. Latimer, Joanna Elizabeth. “Joanna Latimer on’Manifestly Haraway’.” Theory, Culture and Society    (2016).