A Cyborg Manifesto

= a new political myth (based on socialist-feminism)=a new epistemology confronting race, gender, class=a revolutionary standpoint

in response to an emerging system of world order, movement from an organic, industrial society to a polymorphous, information system

Donna Haraway: ‘Cyborg Manifesto’

• What is a ‘cyborg’?• What questions did this article raise?• What are this reading's great strengths?• What are this reading's greatest vulnerabilities?• Where could the reading have gone further?• Your own questions on the readings.

Bodies + Machines

Cyborg, as used for example by Donna Haraway (1991) and Adele Clarke (1998), means the intermingling of people, things (including information technologies), representations, and politics in a way that challenges both the romance of essentialism and the hype about what is technologically possible. It acknowledges the interdependence of people and things, and it shows just how blurry the boundaries between them have become.

(Bowker & Star, 1999)

Does ideology of technology which promises to liberate the body from

its constraints correspond to reality in which we live, or does it

only reproduce the existing patterns of power and authority?

Cyborg• As the information systems of the world expand and

flow into each other, and more people use them for more different things, it becomes harder to hold to pure or universal ideas about representation or information, about identity

• Representations of monsters / hybrids are a reflection of that experience of (ruptured) identity (imagined cyborgs in art and fiction, popular culture)

• Real cyborgs (technologies of health, beauty ...)

Cyborg• Picture of possible unity

• Framework is rearrangement of social relations related to science & technology

• Current movement from organic, industrial society to a polymorphous, information society

Analyses of Cyborg• AAA annual meetings: cyborg anthropology

sessions (mid-1990s+)• Cyborg Handbook (Gray 1995)• The Cyborg Manifesto (Haraway 1985, 1991)

• historical images of cyborgs emerge at times of intense change that involve thinking of how humanity is impacted by technology (Gonzáles 1999)

‘Cyborg’

Source: www.prairiecon.com [accessed Sept. 25, 2002] courtesy of Sarah Oelker

‘Cyborg’

Source: google search for ‘cyborg’ [accessed Sept. 25, 2002] courtesy of Sarah Oelker

Cyborg Representations

• Grotesque images that involve imagining the relationships bw people and things that are interpenetrated

• Bad science fiction or crucial notion for understanding technoscience, and how the knowledge (of science and technology) is shaping lived experience

Source: google search for ‘cyborg’ [accessed Sept. 25, 2002] courtesy of Sarah Oelker

‘Cyborg’

Source: google search for ‘cyborg’ [accessed Sept. 25, 2002] courtesy of Sarah Oelker

‘Cyborg’

Source: google search for ‘cyborg’ [accessed Sept. 25, 2002]

courtesy of Sarah Oelker

Cyborg Representations: Gonzáles

• Organic cyborg (monster of multiple species)• Mechanical cyborg (techno-human amalgamation)• Cyborg consciousness (abstract, amalgamated, hybrid)

• Cyborg body politics? -- Gendered cyborg? (social control over woman’s/man’s body)

• Why are robots not cyborgs?

Cyborg Representations• The notion of purity based on membership in a

single, pristine racial, sexual, or even religious group does not hold in the ‘borderlands’ (the margins) that is populated by cyborgs

• Cyborgs are the iconography of modern experience (not natural, but mediated through technology)

• Why do they reflect a process of rethinking human nature? (use examples from your own search)

autonomous

automaton

simulacrum

pre-industrial

industrial

post-industrial

Cyborg Representations: Gonzáles

• Cyborg images appear when the current model of a human being does not fit a new paradigm -- a hybrid model of existence is required to encompass a new, complex and contradictory lived experience -- the cyborg body becomes the historical record of change in human perception in the realm of fantasy

• How is the cyborg body reflecting modern experience in each of the cases that you can think of?

• What is the habitat of each of these beings?

“The dichotomies that reflect a shift from the comfortable old hierarchicaldomination to the new networks I call the Informatics of Domination”

(Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto (1991), 161

• Representation• Eugenics [biology]• Hygiene• Microbiology, tuberculosis• Organic division of labour• Sex• Labour• Mind• Racial chain of being

White Capitalist Patriarchy

• Simulation• Population control• Stress management• Immunology, AIDS• Ergonomics /cybernetics of labor• Genetic Engineering• Robotics• Artificial Intelligence• Neo-imperialism, United Nations

humanismInformatics of Domination

Informatics of Domination

• biotechnology & medicine have the power for liberation but in fact they do not reverse the existing patterns of power & authority

• if they are further strengthening the cultural definitions of gender

• through practice that involves male professional power and its inscription on a woman’s body

• through research guided by the commercial interests of ‘biotechnology-industrial complex’

Cyborgs in art and life: fictional cyborgs

Human with mechanical attributes: (4 look female; 6 look male)– L’Horlogere (mechanical mistress)– Number 18 (from Dragonball Z)– Robocop– The Bionic Woman– Jax (from Mortal Kombat)– 6 Million Dollar Man– Molly and Dixie Flatline (from Neuromancer)– Seven of Nine (from Star Trek)

Machine with human attributes: (1 looks female; 4 look male; 1 can change its appearance)– Data (from Star Trek)– Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 1 or Terminator 2)– Vicky (from Small Wonder)– T-1000 (from Terminator 2)– Andrew (from Bicentennial Man)– D.A.R.Y.L

Human with magical attributes (magic as another way of controlling nature): (1 male, 1 female)– Harry Potter– Fibi (from Charmed)

Cyborgs in art and life: real-life cyborgsExample: The technology involved:Wearable Computers Chips in clothes, cupsKevin Warwick Implant that records nerve impulsesSteve Mann Electrodes and laser computer display in eyeArtificial limbsChips and gears to replace lost limbStem Cell Research Transplants of nerve cellsRat Robots Rats w/ implants to control movement, feelingCloned livestock Copies of animals, potentially used for foodPlastic pods Lightweight barriers to seal off diseaseFlorida “Cyborg Family” Microchip implants for trackingTom Christerson AbioCor artificial heartJens Artificial vision sensors to replace lost visionLexus factory in Japan Robots doing most work; need human helpDanielle DuvalMicrochip for trackingStephen Hawking Motorized wheelchair and computer voice Xybernaut Wearable computer w/ display covering 1 eye“Cloned” virtual humans Computer-animated people based on real ones

Cyborg Representations• List the organic (human) and inorganic (technological)

characteristics of cyborgs you encountered.

• What was your response to these ‘beings’?

• Are they monsters, hybrids?

• What are they not?