Haraway - "Cyborg Manifesto" - By JS, Morgan, Peter and Nick

In her Cyborg Manifesto, Dona Haraway addresses the notion of human identity by establishing the myth of a cyborg society. She defines the term cyborg as an entity that transgresses established boundaries of society, politics and technology. First, she says that the threshold between animal-human distinctions are overridden by scientific and biological ideologies; next, she describes the blurring between the fields of the organic (human) and machine; finally, she enunciates the break of physical and non-physical, or of the visible presence of humans vs the invisible ubiquity of technology. Haraway also displays two different perspectives of this cyborg world; one, where control mechanisms are imposed on society, the other, an embrace to this fused realities and the affirmation of broken identities. Also, the evolution of current methods of domination is analysed and presented in a list of dichotomies comparing them with the old ones. Throughout her essay she states that current feminism theory should be viewed from the cyborgian perspective, as women as well have fallen out of the definable boundaries established in Western society, like male/female, mind/body, etc. Finally, Haraway points out her preference on being a cyborg than being classified into the Earthly, fragile, adored and helpless position of women as depicted in history (goddess).



The technological dualistic notions of the cyborg were clearly familiar for all of us in our discussion. Having grown up in a sci-fi culture, we made obvious connections to anime classics like "Ghost in the Shell". Nowadays, the idea of the human body as a mechanism and as a complex machine has become commonplace. But, beyond this technological approach, we debated about the concept of the cyborg as a transgressor of social, political and cultural frontiers. We established that most of the dualisms that rule the hegemonic dominant Western world, find their genesis as consequences of colonialism. The breaking of this binarism in a world where institutions overlap each other, where cultures are constantly fused, creating sub-cultures by the minute, where the immediacy of information keeps us so connected, yet so closed, creates the perfect environment for a breed of cyborgs. When identities meld together and cultures are blended, an individual culture appears; a cyborg culture. For us, this embracing of the cyborg seems to be a solution or at least a survival technique in the current state of the world. Instead of returning to nature and trying to avoid the actual simulation, should we embrace it?



In the cyborg world, aren't there imminent dangers of hybridizing and forsaking the natural? Isn't a cyborg world, suppressing and eliminating varieties and diversities in culture, economy, politics, ethics, etc?