A Critical Annotated Webliography

1. Judy Waczman argues that Donna Haraway’s figure of the cyborg has taken on “a life of its own” in popular culture, science fiction and academic writing. In what ways has it been taken up by feminists?

Introduction:

To see how feminists discuss on Haraway’s cyborg theory, I am trying to search the online source based on some keywords, such as feminism, feminist, and Haraway’s cyborg. Then, I discover many meaningful terms from the articles which I have searched, such as postmodern, post-gender, post-human, hybridity, blur, categories, distinctions, boundaries, human, machine, man, women, monster, others, constructivism, and deconstruction, etc. These terms are giving me a basis idea about what I am going to summary.

[1] Baukje Prins’s The Ethnics of Hybrid Subjects: Feminist Constructivism According to Donna Haraway:

Baukje Prins says that cyborg has played an important role in science fiction literature since the 1950s, but Donna Haraway uses it – “the label of science fiction” – as an icon to blur the binary opposition.

It is because Haraway thinks any practices of social categories just a process of reinforcing the notion of hierarchy. So cyborg is a way to liberate people from the authority and suppression. Prins believes cyborg which depicts as a “monster” and “hybrid creature” presents as an icon to blur the notions of normal/abnormal, and us/others.

She describes cyborg is “a constructivist approach” to re-think whether the existence of “grand categories” is absolute right and unproblematic or not. However, she points out that Haraway’s cyborg is constructed for deconstruct the “pre-given categories” may have a possibility to “edge closer to the invisible in-betweens”.

[2] Anne Cranny-Francis’s Somatic Technologies: Embodiment, New Technologies and the Undead:

Anne Cranny-Francis mentions that Donna Haraway’s cyborg has “deployed” in science fiction, and it leads the critical thinking of “the relationship between human embodiment and technology”. Cyborg is depicted as a figure “with digital and bio-technologies” and with the hybridity between human and machine that it does manifest its “power”.

But she states that the metaphor of cyborg which contains a “power” may not “a specifically western phenomenon” but relates to its “textual history”, she thinks one of its “inter-textual references” is “the image of the crucified Christ”.

She argues the “power” of cyborg in a certain extent is like Christ’s body in the late middle Ages that it was the “function as a site of political struggle”, such as “between the laity and the Church”, “between the common people and their leaders”; indeed it is not a struggle only on the ideas, but “a fully engaged and embodied struggle over the nature of being”.

She states that the analogy between the Christ’s body and the cyborg’s body is not going to support or oppose the Haraway’s cyborg theory. It is showing that the “semiotically and culturally powerful and effective” cyborg is not a new thinking in the western cultures. It may be “embedded in western consciousness and subject formation through its earlier manifestations in Christian devotion, which was erotically-charged, affect-laden and corporeally manifest”.

[3] Elizabeth Lane Lawley’s Computers and the Communication of Gender:

Elizabeth Lane Lawley says that new technology communication leads the changing of the definitions of male and female. Then, she introduces Donna Haraways’s cyborg, which is “a tool for both confusing and reconstructing the boundaries of gender,” to support her view.

Lawley believes the notion of cyborg is helping us to use a rather positive perspective to encounter the “instabilities” boundaries when facing the new technology communication, such as computers. She states that it is no longer to judge anything based on what we see after we realized the phenomenon of “shattered categories and shifting identities” on cyborg and any new technologies.

To blur any current categories, no matter on the areas of the new technologies and the definitions of males and females, the notion of cyborg is helping us to aware that this privileged “categories” is actually controlled by men who have more “political and economic power” than other categories such as women.

[4] Carolyn Keen’s Carolyn Keen on Haraway, "Cyborg Manifesto":

Carolyn Keen says that Haraway’s Cyborg theory can be a contemporary socialist-feminist study on the "women's situation in the advanced technological conditions of postmodern life in the First World".

Marxist, psychoanalytic, feminist, and anthropological used to for studying the class, race and gender now can be replaced by Cyborg theory. Why?

The article elaborates that Marxist “humanism” which people can just “come to know the subject through labor”. Psychoanalysis is talking about “the birth of self” or “woman as other”, etc., in which women are “separated” from men or “less selfhood”. Feminism is arguing gender is a “construction”; however it raises the problem about “lapsing into boundless difference and giving up on the confusing task of making partial, real connection".

However, she points out “Haraway's political-scientific analysis of where ‘we’ are going: ‘We are living through a movement from an organic, industrial society to a polymorphous, information system.’” By this mean, this theory closes to our current situation.

It stresses that the concept of cyborg can “evade” the traditional notions about women and “complicate” the traditional binary opposition between men and women. It is helping the physical “us” have a better living in the rapid changing world.

[5] Alison Caddick’s Feminist and Postmodern: Donna Haraway's Cyborg:

Alison Caddick indicates that Haraways’s cyborg is taking the “new philosophical standpoints” to study a subject of “postmodern feminism” and it is good to help us to re-define the women roles in the post-modern world.

However, the disadvantages of cyborg may also be found. Firstly, the concept of cyborg becomes as “technobabble” when it exists to break the common understanding or agreements on the ideas. Secondly, it functions as “a level of a convert play for power” or “on reflection wish to propagate”; but the problem is when Haraway tries to blur any distinctions, it, “ultimately”, may difficult to “hang on to any sense of reality at all”.

[6] Robyn Clough’s Sexed Cyborgs? Please tick appropriate box: M, F, other:

In this article, Robyn Clough asserts that “technological innovation makes it harder for us to draw the distinctions between human, animal and technology, challenging the coherences of the human body as a discrete organic unity.”

To support this statement, she investigates into Donna Haraway’s cyborg that it is “a figuration of post human bodies that embraces the interfacing of the organic and machine”. However, on the other hand, she points out Haraway’s cyborg is actually “a self-consciously sexed cyborg that expresses an acknowledgment of the differences amongst women such as race, class and sexuality” or the bodies are difficult to confirm such as “transsexual” and “intersex bodies”.

In fact, this is not a radical criticism on Haraway’s cyborg. Clough just uses cyborg as an example to discuss any possibility – no matter the sexual differences or the combinations of human nature – would happen in the post-modern world.

Conclusion:

After I studied these six feminists’ discussion on Donna Haraway’s figure of the cyborg, I found that cyborg has become the controversial topics particular on women studies for over decades. Some feminists do positively think cyborg can blur the social categories in which men have more authority but women are suppressed. However, some feminists may question whether cyborg is really blur the distinctions or in a certain extent to reinforce or re-create any possible or invisible distinctions. In my perspective, cyborg can help people to aware the correlation between human and technology, and also to keep in mind that any distinctions may be facing the challenges in the postmodern world.

Bibliography:

[1] Prins, Baukje. ‘The Ethics of Hybrid Subjects: Feminist Constructivism According to Donna Haraway’ in Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 20, No. 3, Special Issue: Feminist and Constructivist Perspectives on New Technology (Summer, 1995), pp. 352-367 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0162-2439(199522)20%3A3%3C352%3ATEOHSF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B (accessed 29 March 2008)

[2] C.F, Anne. ‘Somatic Technologies: Embodiment, New Technologies and the Undead’
http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/display.php?journal_id=84 (accessed 28 March 2008)

[3] L. L., Elizabeth. (1993). ‘Computers and the Communication of Gender’
http://itcs.com/elawley/gender.html (accessed 28 March 2008)

[4] Keen, Caroyn. ‘Carolyn Keen on Haraway, “Cyborg Manifesto”’
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/Courses/keen2.html (accessed 28 March 2008)

[5] Caddick, Alison. ‘Feminist and Postmodern: Donna Haraway’s Cyborg’
http://www.arena.org.au/ARCHIVES/General%20Archive/arena_99-100/haraway.html (accessed 30 March 2008)

[6] Clough, Robyn. ‘Sexed Cyborgs? Please tick appropriate box: M, F, other’ in Social Alternatives, v.16, no.1, Jan 1997: 20-22. Availability: ISSN: 0155-0306.
http://forms.library.uwa.edu.au/cgi-bin/ezpiii-auth.cgi?url=http://search.informit.com.au/fullText;res=APAFT;dn=970606530 (accessed 30 March 2008)