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102 reviews for:
A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century
Donna J. Haraway
3.87 AVERAGE
102 reviews for:
A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century
Donna J. Haraway
3.87 AVERAGE
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
"Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess." 10/10, no notes
I often know that I have picked the right book to read when I start to see connections to my current life. So it was unsurprising to me when I stumbled on the pdf version of this book while watch Love, Death, and Robots on Netflix. This short but incredibly dense piece of writing introduces a modern marvel, the cyborg, as a way of critically interpreting modern life, literature, and politics. The cyborg is a partial object, a combination of contradictions, and a promise of movement away from the totalizing myths of Western Culture that place Man (read: white heterosexual men) at the center of progress and enlightenment. The cyborg transforms the world around it by identifying with the multiple intersections and technologies that construct the concepts of Woman and Other. I’m going to have to think more about this, because Haraway is a lot smarter than I am, but I loved it and I can’t wait to read the next book of hers.
medium-paced
Probably one of the most bewildering texts I've ever read, yet it still made me feel extremely empowered. Once you can start parsing out what Donna Haraway is saying, you realise how radically liberatory her ideas are, not just by the standards of 1985, but even today. It's important to acknowledge that this essay was a response to the goddess movement, a popular viewpoint in the 1980s feminist movement, which sought to restore an imagined pre-patriarchal worship of women as life-giving childbearers. It's within this context that her rallying cry begins to take shape.
Haraway argues that: "there is nothing about being ‘female’ that naturally binds women." She argues for a feminism that rejects gender essentialism, as well as the traditional nature/culture divide popular in Western political thought. She argues that nature and culture are both inseparable from each other, and that technology could be used to liberate women without upholding essentialist ideas of womanhood. This was in stark contrast to the feminist orthodoxy at the time, which thought that all forms of technology were patriarchal tools of oppression.
Sometimes people think that Haraway is arguing in favour of people becoming cyborgs, which she defines as "fabricated hybrids of machine and organism." I would argue that she is instead saying that we as humans are already cyborgs. When we are cold, we wear clothes to keep us warm. If we want to carry more than our hands can hold, we use bags, pockets, and trolleys to transport a larger amount of objects. If we want to walk over rough terrain, we wear shoes. As humans, we're already using technology to transcend our physical limitations, but we don't realise this because it's so common that it's mundane. This is one of the reasons why I find this essay so powerful, because she's not just arguing against an existing power structure, she's completely reframing the way we think about power. While I do think that Haraway is pro-cyborg roughly speaking, she's also saying that any attempt to separate women from technology is fruitless since “humans” as we now know them don’t exist separately from technology, because technology is the basis for the construction of what we identify as human. She's not just pro-transhumanism, she's arguing that we were always transhuman.
Although this essay is short, it's also extremely dense. Haraway also takes down white feminism, argues in favour of class and race intersectional feminism, and argues against sex negative radical feminism for all in this one text. There's still a lot I don't understand about this text, as the writing is almost impenetrable, but on the other hand, I kind of like how Haraway struggles against language itself. The language we currently have is informed by the cisheteropatriarchal world we live in. To break out of that, she coins new words in an almost artistic fashion, using language in a liberatory way to create new possible ways of thinking and being. I also appreciate her complete refusal to call for a return to a past world, as this desire to go back is one that can easily be lead in fascist directions if left unchecked. According to Haraway, the only way out of the patriarchy is forwards, not backwards.
This is not an easy text. It's something that needs to be sat with for a while in order to be appreciated. It's ideas are hidden behind topsy-turvy meandering prose, and Haraway rarely stops to explain herself. In spite of that, I still think it's a text that's extremely relevant to our times. In a world where TERFism is on the rise, we need to reject gender essentialism now more than ever. Why should our bodies stop at the skin? And why should womanhood be defined by the capacity to breed? With an anti-essentialist viewpoint, we can break down the barriers of categories themselves through affinity instead of identity.
Haraway argues that: "there is nothing about being ‘female’ that naturally binds women." She argues for a feminism that rejects gender essentialism, as well as the traditional nature/culture divide popular in Western political thought. She argues that nature and culture are both inseparable from each other, and that technology could be used to liberate women without upholding essentialist ideas of womanhood. This was in stark contrast to the feminist orthodoxy at the time, which thought that all forms of technology were patriarchal tools of oppression.
Sometimes people think that Haraway is arguing in favour of people becoming cyborgs, which she defines as "fabricated hybrids of machine and organism." I would argue that she is instead saying that we as humans are already cyborgs. When we are cold, we wear clothes to keep us warm. If we want to carry more than our hands can hold, we use bags, pockets, and trolleys to transport a larger amount of objects. If we want to walk over rough terrain, we wear shoes. As humans, we're already using technology to transcend our physical limitations, but we don't realise this because it's so common that it's mundane. This is one of the reasons why I find this essay so powerful, because she's not just arguing against an existing power structure, she's completely reframing the way we think about power. While I do think that Haraway is pro-cyborg roughly speaking, she's also saying that any attempt to separate women from technology is fruitless since “humans” as we now know them don’t exist separately from technology, because technology is the basis for the construction of what we identify as human. She's not just pro-transhumanism, she's arguing that we were always transhuman.
Although this essay is short, it's also extremely dense. Haraway also takes down white feminism, argues in favour of class and race intersectional feminism, and argues against sex negative radical feminism for all in this one text. There's still a lot I don't understand about this text, as the writing is almost impenetrable, but on the other hand, I kind of like how Haraway struggles against language itself. The language we currently have is informed by the cisheteropatriarchal world we live in. To break out of that, she coins new words in an almost artistic fashion, using language in a liberatory way to create new possible ways of thinking and being. I also appreciate her complete refusal to call for a return to a past world, as this desire to go back is one that can easily be lead in fascist directions if left unchecked. According to Haraway, the only way out of the patriarchy is forwards, not backwards.
This is not an easy text. It's something that needs to be sat with for a while in order to be appreciated. It's ideas are hidden behind topsy-turvy meandering prose, and Haraway rarely stops to explain herself. In spite of that, I still think it's a text that's extremely relevant to our times. In a world where TERFism is on the rise, we need to reject gender essentialism now more than ever. Why should our bodies stop at the skin? And why should womanhood be defined by the capacity to breed? With an anti-essentialist viewpoint, we can break down the barriers of categories themselves through affinity instead of identity.
I can't rate it since I didn't understand it. Like at all. I know it was about deconstruction identities and feminism and the left and race and sex but other than that, no clue. Don't even know how cyborgs tie into it.
A genuinely interesting and radical piece of theory and cyberfeminism that is also quite difficult to parse and extremely abstract. There are bits and pieces that are very hard-hitting (the first and last chapters, respectively) but the remaining text feels over the top.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
"La liberación se basa en la construcción de la conciencia, de la comprensión imaginativa de la opresión, y, también, de lo posible."
Como cualquier texto de Haraway, está denso. A veces me frustro con textos que tengo que releer una y otra vez, pero valió la pena.
Me parece muy interesante plantearse cómo la tecnología, la globalización y las nuevas formas de socialización afectan nuestra interpretación del género, del trabajo, de las definiciones y barreras de clase, raza. Creo que hace críticas muy válidas al feminismo hegemónico blanco que considera que por naturaleza habrá algo en común entre todas las mujeres.
"Los nuevos arreglos económicos y tecnológicos están asimismo relacionados con el desfalleciente estado del bienestar y con la consiguiente intensificación de las exigencias que se hacen a las mujeres para que se mantengan a sí mismas y ayuden en el mantenimiento de los hombres, de los niños y de los ancianos."
No sé qué pensaba la Haraway de la interseccionalidad pero este texto se siente como una cercanía a ese concepto desde la perspectiva de las afectaciones tecnológicas en nuestra cultura. Y lo de la feminización del trabajo moderno no lo había escuchado nunca y me pareció sumamente fuerte, quisiera aprender más.
Como cualquier texto de Haraway, está denso. A veces me frustro con textos que tengo que releer una y otra vez, pero valió la pena.
Me parece muy interesante plantearse cómo la tecnología, la globalización y las nuevas formas de socialización afectan nuestra interpretación del género, del trabajo, de las definiciones y barreras de clase, raza. Creo que hace críticas muy válidas al feminismo hegemónico blanco que considera que por naturaleza habrá algo en común entre todas las mujeres.
"Los nuevos arreglos económicos y tecnológicos están asimismo relacionados con el desfalleciente estado del bienestar y con la consiguiente intensificación de las exigencias que se hacen a las mujeres para que se mantengan a sí mismas y ayuden en el mantenimiento de los hombres, de los niños y de los ancianos."
No sé qué pensaba la Haraway de la interseccionalidad pero este texto se siente como una cercanía a ese concepto desde la perspectiva de las afectaciones tecnológicas en nuestra cultura. Y lo de la feminización del trabajo moderno no lo había escuchado nunca y me pareció sumamente fuerte, quisiera aprender más.
challenging
reflective
fast-paced