Donna Haraway is considered as a
feminist, neo Marxist and postmodernist. Her works have always bought together
the ideas of science and feminism though she is known as a prominent scholar in
the field of science and technology. She is known for her alternative theories
and viewpoints towards the mainstream accepted ideologies which also presents
her call for the unity of ‘women’ for a rationale unity which can create an end
to the problems created by the hegemonic
bracketing and categorizations within the category of women. In her essay “A
Manifesto for Cyborgs”, Donna Haraway points out that there is no such thing as
‘woman’s experience’ and the same proposed by International Women’s Movements
are constructed.
Oxford English dictionary defines cyborg as a
“fictional or hypothetical person whose physical abilities are extended beyond
human limitations by mechanical elements built into body.” In the essay, Haraway
uses this ‘cyborg’ as a metaphor to expose how things which are considered
natural are mechanical constructs, shaped by certain ideas. This is
particularly connected to feminism as women live within the experiences
constructed by certain ‘groups’. Haraway cites on cyborg as a “creature in a
post-gender world” which “skips the step of original unity, of identification
with nature in the western sense”. Cyborgs are conceived as socially
constructed hybrids of machines and organisms, a coupling of social reality and
fiction. Three central pairs which are examined through the metaphor of cyborg
are human and animal, man and machine, and the physical and non physical. The
image of borderland is used to denote as the productive space intended for
knowledge building. ‘Cyborg’ is the symbol used in the essay to argue for the
construction of one’s consciousness or responsibility in the age of technology.
Harraway attempts to interpret social structures through the construct of
cyborg. Cyborg is an attempt to create a sense of community without insisting
on an absolute identity. It can be seen as one’s ontology which argues for
situated, localized knowledge rather than providing a universal claim. Technology
and civilization are argued to be the ways of subduing nature and bending it to
human will. Nature-culture is also a repeated dichotomy uses in theories to
explain world events and ideologies, from colonialism to Freudianism. These are
mentioned in the essay as well.
The
essay was able to counter the standard feminist lines on the use of technology.
Zeo Sofoulis notes on it so, “Whereas a standard feminist line on technology
had been to equate it with abstract masculinist rationality, militarism and the
rape of the Earth, Haraway insisted on the intimate physicality of our
relations to nonhumans,and on ‘the pleasures of interface’(qtd. in Schneider295).
The exclusionary politics and simplification of the women’s experience is
challenged here. Sisterhood is often raised as a tool of women empowerment
which can be seen as a striking chord of black feminism. Here joint kinship is
proposed as a solution. Haraway views so, “theoretical and practical struggle against
unity-through-domination or unity-through incorporation ironically not only
undermines the justifications for patriarchy, colonialism, humanism,
positivism, essentialism, scientism and other unlamented-isms, but all claims
for an organic or natural standpoint”. Haraway observes that this stand is timely
as there was no other time in “history when there was a greater need for
political unity to confront effectively the dominations of race, gender,
sexuality and class”. A unity is most possible at this moment as the ‘non
innocence’ of the category ‘women’ are understood by white women and social
feminists now. Cyborgian feminism should stress the argument to rule out a
natural matrix of unity and that no construction is whole. The naturalization
and denaturing of the category ‘woman’ was always pointed by Marxist and
socialist feminisms. She draws out a caricature of bracketing in feminisms
which reveal the hypocrisy of not including the structural room for race which
goes like this:
Socialist
feminism-structure of class//wage labour//alienation labour, by analogy
reproduction, by extension sex, by addition race.
Radical
feminism- structure of gender//sexual appropriation//objectification sex, by
analogy labour, by extension reproduction, by addition race
Haraway sketches a picture of
possible unity listing certain dichotomies which include
Representation-simulation; heat-noise; bourgeois novel-science fiction;
realism-postmodernism; biology as a clinical practice and that as an
inscription; sex-genetic engineering etc. In the set of pairs listed by
Haraway, the first category appears as ‘naturalistic categories’ but not so,
the second category subverts the supposed natural categories. Both categories
are constructed in the world. For instance, ideologies which support sexual
reproduction are also not considered reasonable. Here, the ambiguity of
natural-cultural binaries are revealed and the definition of ‘naturalness’ is
also bought into question.
Haraway wants the feminists to code
a cyborgian self which is a kind of “dissembled and reassembled, postmodern collective
and personal self”. She exposes that there are inadequacies existing in the analysis
of scientific and cultural objects of knowledge since the Second World War. The
dichotomies between body and mind, animal and human, organism and machine,
public and private, nature and culture, men and women, primitive and civilized
are all ideological questions. Women are integrated into such dichotomies of
production/ reproduction/ communication which are termed as informatics of
domination. The way to reconstruct these dominant practices is through theory
and practice addressed to the social aspects involved in science and
technology. The transformations the world of biology and communication sciences
propose to the world into a problem is through the illustration of cybernetic systems
or interpreting through molecular genetics, ecology etc. These interpretations
are considered as only those in a fundamental level. New groups doing science
should have a kind of constitutive role in the production of knowledge,
imagination and practice. Haraway also enquires the possibility of these groups
be allied with progressive social and political movements.
The
essay was criticized for its opaque language and the author’s understanding of the
scientific method was questioned often.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lemoine, Sunny “Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto”.
N.p.n.d. Web. 20 Nov 2015.
Schneider,
Joseph. “Haraway’s Viral Cyborg”. Women’s Studies Quarterly. 40.1(2012):
294-300. JSTOR. Web. 20 Nov 2015.
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