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A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century
By, Donna Haraway
As interpreted by, Melissa Moore and Misti Yaddaw
Overall Overview:
Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto is a piece that is both feminist and revolutionary. The first is that of socialist feminism in which Haraway correlates the sexual objectification of women with the alienation of labor. The second is political, in which Haraway attempts to rally together those who are different, those who who do not fall into the Anglo-male category, and those who are looking for a voice. An important aspect of Haraway’s piece is her attempt to include and incorporate rather than divide and segregate. Haraway wants us to recognize humans as one with technology, as our dependence on such increases. She contests that we need to see ourselves as cyborgs, a type of human/mechanism hybrid. In accepting ourselves as cyborgs, we are no longer subjugated based on anatomy. As cyborgs, work will no longer be alienating because we are one with the machines that enable us with power and expression. Haraway rejects the ideas of imaginary utopias under the pretense that they will make us disinterested in opposing economic and political repression. Haraway embraces the postmodern world, expressing her feelings that freedom lies in the future rather than the past. Chapter Overview:
An Ironic Dream of A Common Language for Women in the Integrated Circuit
Haraway’s first chapter provides us with her socialist feminist views as related to the cyborg. She explains the vision of a cyborg as, “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political constructions, a world-changing fiction”(1967). Haraway continues saying, “Liberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative apprehension, of oppression, and so of possibility. The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women’s experience in the late twentieth century” (1967). We can gather from these excerpts that the liberation of women relies on both the lived and constructed image of women as oppressed. It is not enough that we have actual examples of women’s oppression based in reality, but also throughout mediums such as literature, we re-create or fictionalize these examples to strengthen the need for liberation and action. Further in the chapter, Haraway states, “The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics.” continuing, “In the traditions of ‘Western’ science and politics–the tradition of racist, male-dominated capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as a resource for the productions of culture; the tradition of reproduction of the self from the reflections of the other–the relation between organism and machine has been a border war” (1968). Haraway is embracing the cyborg as a form of political means. The cyborg represents the combination of technology and social reality, resulting in the blurring of our identities. As assimilated as human and machine are today, there still exists the debate over which is responsible and better suited to take over means of production, reproduction and imagination. The boundary between these two compelling forces is no longer visible enough to declare one ‘this’ and the other ‘that.’ There is no longer definitive separations, we can no longer see the boundaries, and Haraway is taking satisfaction in this confusion and our role in it’s construction. Haraway does not deem one ‘good’ and another ‘bad,’ but rather wants us to recognize how blurred the boundary is and that our role in the creation of this technology resulted in the construction of the cyborg. Haraway explains that the cyborg deconstructs our framework of thinking in binary oppositions.
The three “boundary breakdowns” that Haraway deems most important to analysis of political-scientific analysis are “the boundary between human and animal”- seeing more strongly the connection and influence nature has on culture. She argues that the cyborg is the signal that animal and human are more strongly connected than previously thought. The second boundary is between organism and machine. She brings up the point that previously machines were only a simulation of man’s ability to think. Previous thought dictated that the life of “man” posessed a power to create which could never be achieved through a simulation. Haraway insits that this boundary has been breached as ”machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed”(1970). This idea is explored in Galatea 2.2 as Imp H is a self-reflective machine which functions to develop itself even without the presence of organism (Powers). Much of the Powers novel focuses on the way in which man processes information by inserting the machine’s process of information in a similar way. The machine takes on the identity of a child, learning by continuously expanding its schema for all things literate. The third crossing of boundaries is from the physical and non physical. As technology is increasingly produced smaller and smaller, providing the fluid movement of information or entertainment in a much more fluid manner than humanly possible. Haraway states that they “are about consciousness–or its simulation” (1971). This idea connects to Baudrillard’s idea of the simulacrum in which there is no reality, simply simulations of simulations representing something for which there is no original. This idea is played out in Galatea 2.2 within the argument Powers makes that the machine will never be able to “understand.” Haraway would argue that humans can never “understand” either, since all we signify has no real ’signified.’
The Informatics of Domination
In the second chapter, Haraway addresses the means of power and the transition from former hierarchal means of domination to the new ’networks’ which Haraway calls the Informatics of Domination. This represents the movement from “modernist” forms of power to “postmodernist” forms of power, the latter being power which has resulted from new advances in science and technology directly affecting current social relations.The list provides a deconstruction of modernism, by using the ideas on the right(postmodern) to deconstruct the left(modern). The list she provides is similar to the list in the Malpas reading (pg 7 of the introduction) which maps the change from modernism to postmodernism, except Haraway focuses mostly on changes which also change relations of power. Some examples of Haraway: Small group>subsystem, Reproduction>replication, Labor> robotics, Mind>artificial intelligence, White capitalist patriarchy>Informatics of domination. She ends this section by saying “the social relations of science and technology” indicate that we are dealing with a “historical system depending upon structured relations among people”(1976). Haraway goes on to list three major necessities of technological advancement. 1) Technology provides fresh sources of power: Govt. technology to track people, higher functioning weapons for war, The rich can afford new tech. therefore subverting the poor even lower on the social ladder. These sources of power contiunally increase and are used in new ways as technology advances. Haraway insists that as a result,2) this power calls for new means of analyzing the cyborg. This analysis is most commonly found in the form of literature and art. postmodern literature emerged as a way to explore the way in which our world has changed, the way the cyborg has affected our culture, and the way we (humans) have evolved and developed as a result. McHale’s idea of the ontological returns as, in PM. lit, the world itself is called in to question– a way of analyzing the breakdown of the three barriers talked about in the last section. At this point, I feel comfortable admiting that Haraway thinks of Postmodern and Cyborg writing in the same way. This writing, she says, “is about the power to survive, not on the original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world the marked them as other”(1983). Similarly to the members of Project Mayhem in Fight Club, the children of the cyborg are “Stripped of identity, the bastard race” which is attempting to teach the world about the power of the margins and the importance of using any means possible to survive. Project Mayhem represents the overlooked, the laborors of society who, when united, have the potential to hold the most power. 3) new forms of political action: internet provides a forum for connecting political ideas all over the world. Politicians are realizing how addicted America’s youth is to myspace/facebook/blogging, and have started creating their own internet identities as a way to connect to a younger, fast-paced, internet generation. Powers’ book spends some time discussing how easy this connection is attained, as well as how many different identities one person can portray from one computer chair… This connects to Haraway where she states “Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert” (1970).
Winterson’s novel in which she removes access to the narrator’s gender and sex, is a way of analyzing how important the idea of gender really is within our society. By doing so, the reader is unable to form gender-based stereotypes about the narrator, and by the end of the novel is able to contemplate whether or not knowing the narrator’s gender would have changed the reader’s perspective of the character, as well as why or why not. This supports Haraway’s idea that “Gender might not be global identity after all, even if it has profound historical breadth and depth”(1987). Misti’s example of how this idea can be easier understood is when compared to a pearl. It’s been told that a pearl is built in layers around a speck of dirt. Imagine peeling back hundreds of layers of pearl to find no evidence of anything in the middle. The layers of pearl have built up over time, each formed on top of the other until what truly lies at the middle is not only non-existant, but never was.
The “Homework Economy” Outside “The Home”
The third chapter Haraway discusses the new world-wide working class that has been brought about as a result of the “New Industrial Revolution.” Haraway explains that this shift has resulted in the weakening of familiar groups such as Anglo-male. The concept “homework economy” comes from Richard Gordon, whom Haraway explains the concept as “to name a restructuring of work that broadly has the characteristics formerly ascribed to female jobs, jobs literally done only by women. Work is being redefined as both literally female and feminized, whether performed by men or women” (1976). Haraway further expands on this concept explaining that it “indicates that factory, home and market are integrated on a new scale and that the places of women are crucial–and need to be analyzed for differences among women and for meanings for relations between men and women in various situations” (1976). Haraway is using this concept to address the capitalist world structure and how it has been affected by technology. Haraway continues, “A major social and political danger is the formation of a strongly bimodal social structure, with the masses of women and men of all ethnic groups, but especially people of color, confined to a homework economy, illiteracy of several varieties, and general redundancy and impotence, controlled by high tech repressive apparatuses ranging from entertainment to surveillance and disappearance” (1979). Haraway is making the argument for the dangers that occur by having a social structure with two contrasting forms that confine such previously disempowered groups, to the Anglo-male dominate forms of the past. Haraway explains that with new form, there needs to be new political actions to oppose and protect. She feels that there needs to be socialist-feminist politics to address the new forms.
Women In The Integrated Circuit
The fourth chapter explains how women’s lives have been ideologically characterized by the distinction of public and private domains. Haraway returns to the idea of ‘networking’ which suggests “the profusion of spaces and identities and the permeability of boundaries in the personal body and in the body politic” (1979). The networking rejects the constructed dichotomies and instead accepts the idea of weaving and blurred boundaries. Haraway discusses the vision of women’s “place” in the “integrated circuit” from the point of view of specific aspects of capitalist societies; being: Home, Market, Paid Work Place, State, School, Clinic-Hospital, and Church. Haraway suggests that “the impact of the social relations mediated and enforced by the new technologies in order to help formulate needed analysis and practical work” (1979). Haraway continues that we need to read these ‘networks’ to learn from them. She explains that social relations of science and technology being interwoven call for a need of socialist-feminist politics to address science and technology.
Cyborgs: A Myth of Political Identity
The final chapter ties the entire piece together. Haraway concludes the manifesto by explaining the ‘cyborg identity.’ She states, “a cyborg identity, a potent subjectivity synthesized from fusions of outsider identities” (1982). Haraway explains the effects of a cyborg world, as breaking down the clear distinctions between the organism and machine, as well as distinctions between the Western self. It breaks down the prior ideologies and domination, while opening up new possibilities. One of the significant aspects of her piece is the concept that the cyborg world intends to survive the future rather than reinacting the past. Haraway concludes by stating the necessity to avoid universal totalizing theory due to the fact that it misses most of reality and taking responsibility for social relations of science and technology. She ends in saying, “It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories. Though both are bound in spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess” (1987).
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When I viewed the Nikki Lee projects, i initially thought that they looked like they could have been anyone’s random pictures out of a photo album. The familiarity of this style seems to be her intent throughout the projects. In class we discussed how race and gender were major factors in the projects, but while taking another look at them I noticed a few other factors that could be being addressed in the photos. If these photos are causing us to become aware of our preconcieved notions; the thoughts that instantly develop in about the photos as a result of societal influences, I could see class, ageism and regions being addressed in these photos. The Ohio project upholds these stereotypes that often exist about the middle region of America. Stereotypes that there is much poverty (the house with all the laundry hanging outside and the lady wearing a goofy t-shirt), and that there are still continuous sentiments of segregation as well as a lack of good education (the confederate flag which states “I Ain’t). Class can be shown through The Ohio project, The yuppie project, and The Hispanic project. The yuppie project shows Lee with a dog in front of a department store and a large Tiffany’s blue shopping bag, all signifying wealth and higher class. The Hispanic project showed girls wearing little clothing, a street lined with stoops overflowing with people; signifying a lower class. The men sitting at the folding table could be millionaries; yet notions that have formed over years through media and other mediums, does not make that a conclusion i would ever draw about these men.
Nikki Lee’s projects made me think of a portfolio my friend who is a photography major once did. She was required to find subjects and capture them in their home lifestyle. She wasn’t supposed to know the subjects and the pictures were supposed to provide mini biographies about each subject. My friend decided to take pictures of a few of my friends and myself as opposed to strangers, but acted as if she didn’t know us. She used the pictures that she took of us to create our mini bios, which couldn’t have been further from the truth. In one picture I was standing near a globe and she explained to the class that I traveled the world as part of my carreer. The professor loved her portfolio so much that she wanted her to do a follow up on her subjects. Similar to Lee’s projects, it is a natural reaction to see a photo and immediately assign a story to it. My friend’s professor and class saw what they thought was truth in her portfolio pictures, like we see what we think is truth as society has taught us in Lee’s photos.
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After reading Hutcheon’s piece, The Politics of Postmodernism, I felt that I had a more concise understanding of Postmodernism, and what it is meant to do within various areas. Initially, Hutcheon explains the correlation of postmodernism with representation. Hutcheon explains, “Nevertheless, in literary and art critical circles there is still a tendency to see postmodern theory and practice either as simply replacing representation with the idea of textuality or as denying our intricate involvement with representation, even though much postmodern thought has disputed this tendency” (29-30). Hutcheon explains that postmodernism goes beyond replacing traditonal modes of representation and challenges what we see as truth by ‘representing duplicates’ (30). Hutcheon refrences Althusser’s view of ideology as a production of representations. There is no real because everything is a reproduction of a reproduction. “There is nothing natural about the ‘real’ and there never was- even before the existence of mass media” (31). What I liked most about Hutcheon’s explanation of postmodernism is that it made me feel less disconcerting about the intentions of postmodernism. For a while I was thinking of postmodernism as a pesemistic view, where there is no order and no end. From the Hutcheon reading I saw postmodernism in a different light, as stated; “The postmodern, as I have been defining it, is not a degeneration into ‘hyperreality’ but a questioning of what reality can mean and how we can come to know it. It is not that representation now dominates or effaces the referent, but rather that it now self-consciously acknowledges its existence as representation-that is, as interpreting (indeed as creating) its referent, not as offering direct and immediate access to it” (32). According to Hutcheon, we can use postmodernism as a tool to see what we see as truth and reality, and why we see it this way. To question our beliefs and acknowledge what can be changed. As in Sherman’s film stills, she uses images of women in stereotypical roles associated with the female gender to question how women have assumed these roles throughout the years, and hopefully spark change. I thought that this reading was best for me to understand postmodernism, and what it can do for various mediums ranging from arts to politics.
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I looked at Untitled Film Still #58, in which Sherman is standing in front of a large building. She has short, untamed hair and her scarf is blowing in the wind. Her gaze is off to the side and she has a serious look on her face. My initial thought was that she looked like Bob Dylan. This struck me as postmodern in the sense that similar to the narrator in Winterson’s Written on the Body, the gender seems ambiguous. The longer that I studied the film still, it reminded me of the stereotypical new york city woman, short hair a stern look on her face, and wearing a gender neutral outfit; taking on what could be considered more masculine qualities to procure a career in a big city.
Film Still #20 is Sherman exiting what seems to be her home, wearing a button down shirt tucked into a below the knee length skirt and wearing a hankerchief protecting her hair, as well as carrying a purse. This film still initially made me think of my grandma, because of her hair being covered and how proper and ‘lady like’ she looks. Sherman seems to be assuming the role of housewife, where although you can only see a slight bit of the house, the large shrubs and bricks aligning the door make it look as if it would be a pristine house in a quiet neighborhood, and Sherman is leaving to do some grocery shopping or pick of the children from school.
Untitled Film Still #7 shows a disheveled Sherman exiting what seems to be the sliding glass doors of a pool house. Her hair is messy, she has a cocktail in her hand and a slumped over posture which gives her the appearance of being drunk, and her other hand is lifting up a side of the slip that she is wearing. She has dark sunglasses on and a blank stare. The film still makes me think of Hollywood starlets, what Marilyn Monroe may have been like off the camera. In this film still Sherman fulfills the stereotype hollywood beauty, yet one who is overindulging, and troubled.
As the Malpas reading states, “In the case of the postmodern feminists, this notion of performative subjectivity is employed to disrupt the traditionally ascribed gender positions identified by Cixous.” (74). Within the film stills, Sherman takes on the roles of the stereotypes that women have assumed throughout the years as a way of calling attention to the issues of such gender roles.
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I personally enjoyed the ending of Fight Club more than that of the film. I thought that Chapter 30 was a beautiful juxtaposition between heaven and an institution. The narrator never comes out and states that he is in an institution but rather commpares everything to that of idealistic features of heaven. The Psychiatrist is God, the nurses as angels, everything is white and quiet. I liked how even in the institutions there are still remenants of fight club, because what was put into motion can not be stopped. There is an ambiguity to the state of the narrator. We do not know if Tyler has survived or is gone for good. We are not sure if the narrator will return to fight club if he ever leaves the institution. I felt that this was a postmodern type of ending because it is really not an ‘ending’ because there is no real resolution. Everything is still up for interpretation and there is no real ‘end’ in sight. We aren’t sure what will happen to civilization because according to the whispers, “We’re going to break up civilization so we can make something better out of the world.”(208)
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Religion is an important underlying theme that carries throughout Fight Club. Tyler is created by the narrator out of necessity, encompassing everything that the narrator lacks and offering ’salvation.’ In a sense, Tyler could be comparable to a God. The narrator and others look up to him for guidance and salvation. He offers this salvation; however, you need put your full trust in Tyler. Tyler preaches that, “Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything.”(70). In essence, Tyler is offering them a type of rebirth but only until they are willing to give of themselves. This parallels the religious ideals of such as Christianity. One has to love GOD and let him into ones life; fully trusting him, in order to be a ‘good Christian.’ Similarly in fight club, “…Tyler said if I loved him, I’d trust him” (89). There are rules of fight club that everyone must obey, similar to the Ten Comandments that Christians must follow. If I were to parallel it to religion, Fight club in a sense would represent a church. The men go there and from that experience gain clairity and a type of peace, Tyler is a representative of GOD, whom the men respect and follow. Project Mayhem; therefore, would be in a sense missionaries, spreading Tyler’s word.
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One of the important themes that I have found in the beginning of Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk is the underlying theme of capitalism. In chapter five, the narrator explains himself through his belongings. He states all of this belongings and explains how, “It took my whole life to buy this stuff” and continues, “Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you” (44). I saw this as really touching on the nature of capitalism. Many people tend to buy and buy out of no real necessity other than the fact that it is what our society has taught us to do. You get to the point where you have accumulated a bunch of items that you don’t really need, that hold no real meaning and often puts people in debt to the point where now the belongings own you. I felt that the narrator summed this sentiment when he is listing the food in his refrigerator and states, “I know, I know, a house full of condiments and no real food” (45). There is no real substance to what he owns, and this goes hand in hand with the idea of capitalism being expressed in the book.
Fight club in a sense offers an escape from capitalism. If capitalism is about purchasing rather than having to experience anything, fight club offers the alternative. It is something you don’t talk about, because you can not put it into words. You do not need to put fight club into words because it is inevitably about experience. Fight club gives control back to the subject. In a capitalistic world, the subject is a reflection of what they own and fight club offers a release from that.
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Jameson uses art, architecture, literature, film and theory to help explain Postmodernism. Within art, Jameson explains postmodernism as signaling the end of the bourgeois ego in what Jameson calls ‘the waning of affect.’ Jameson explains this as the end of unique and personal style, liberation from feeling since there is no longer a self present to do the feeling. Jameson explains this as not being devoid of feeling, but rather being more accurate with feeling. The idea that carries throughout the Jameson reading is that Postmodernism signifies the disappearance of the individual subject and the concept of waning. The Postmodernism concepts of the Jameson reading are visible throughout the film Fight Club. In the film, there is no real time period. As Jameson explains of Postmodern film, “This approach to the present by way of the art language of the simulacrum, or of the pastiche of the stereotypical past, endows present reality and the openness of present history with the spell and distance of a glossy mirage. Yet this mesmerizing new asthetic mode itself emerged as an elaborated symptom of the waning of our historicity, of our lived possiblity of experiencing history in some active way.” (21) Jameson continues, “…we seem increasingly incapable of fashioning representations of our own current experience” (21). This idea that we can only represent our ideas and stereotypes about the past is a major theme throughout the film. Tyler wants to dictate their own version of history by creating project mayhem which is involved in such tasks as destroying the credit building. Another major theme throughout the film is that of capitalism and as Jameson explains, “We are somehow to lift our minds to a point at which it is possible to understand that capitalism is at one and the same time the best thing that has ever happened to the human race, and the worst” (47). The film exemplifies how capitalism has taken over with such refrences to Starbucks and IKEA, and how it is causing a decline in society. Ed Norton’s character is in one scene explains his life through his IKEA furniture purchases. The Jameson reading and Fight Club film both exemplifiy the major concepts behind postmodernism.
