Annotated Webliography Q3

Question 3 : 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?

Many researchers have long debated Donna Haraway’s concept of the cyborg. I started my research on Haraway by looking it up on Wikipedia and found a lot of keywords such as cyber feminism, cyborg, gender and etc. Let me begin by first defining what a cyborg is in dictionary terms. It is a person whose physiological functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device. But according to Haraway’s term, she defines the cyborg as "a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction"(CM, 149).

Below here are the following articles that helped with answering the guiding question that I found useful:

1. Krista Scott, "The Cyborg, the Scientist, the Feminist & Her Critic",

This is a very detailed reading on Haraway’s vision of the cyborg. It’s an interesting critique as the thoughts on the concept and in particular with Marxism theory. There are also problems of cyborg politics upon feminist identities; in which the author challenges some kind of self-adaptation.

2. Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature.

This essay showcases Haraway’s argument is introduced as "an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism" (CM, 149). She claims blasphemy and irony as her vantage tools. Blasphemy invokes the seriousness of the stance she adopts, as well as her distancing from the moral majority without breaking with the idea of community and connectivity, and "irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true... It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method" (CM, 149).


3. Chela Sandoval, "New Sciences: Cyborg Feminism and the Methodology of the Oppressed." In The Cyborg Handbook, ed. Chris Hables Gray.

This article introduces some pretty good arguments and shows the disputes on Haraway’s concept of the cyborg and the ideas that follows it. Sandoval further develops Haraway’s notion and applies the cyborg metaphor for various marginalized groups in the States. The author considers the cyborg theory would also be fundamental for fields out of feminism. This example illustrates the fact that Haraways’s cyborg has taken a life of its own.


4. Steven Dixon, “Metal Gender”

This is an interesting piece that shows how the author disagrees with Haraway’s idea of the cyborg. The reading points out many factors such as Haraway’s ‘treatment of gender is self-contradictory and unconvincing’ from what has been written in the Manifesto. He then proposes ‘metal gender’ but not the ‘gender-blinded’ cyborg of Haraway as the cyborg imposes serious strains upon the binary classification system Bourdieu defines ("a fundamental principle of ... two complementary classes"), as well as on ideas of separations which operate within and against "the network of biological kinship".

5. Hari Kunzru, “You are a Cyborg”

This commentary by Hari Kunzru discusses the notion of the cyborg based on Haraway's ‘Cyborg Manifesto’. Feminists everywhere have grasped on the prospects that both men and women can all be restructured if they are not normal but are constructed, like a cyborg.


In conclusion, having done a lot of research on this topic has been a great introduction into understanding feminism, cyborgs and so much more. It definitely has revealed a lot in the overall feminist thinking on Donna Haraway's concept of the cyborg. However, it is still very highly-debatable but no doubt; there has been heaps of significant findings and an eye-opener to Haraway’s figure of the cyborg.


Bibliography:


Scott, Krista (1997). The Cyborg, the Scientist, the Feminist & Her Critic.
The Feminist eZine - Modern Feminism
http://www.feministezine.com/feminist/philosophy/cyborg-scientist-feminist.html

Haraway, Donna (1991). "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature.
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/haraway/haraway-a-cyborg-manifesto.html

Sandoval, Chela (1995). "New Sciences: Cyborg Feminism and the Methodology of the Oppressed." In The Cyborg Handbook, ed. Chris Hables Gray. New York: Routledge.
http://www.stumptuous.com/comps/sandoval.html

Dixon, Steve (2003). ‘Metal Gender’.
http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=384

Kunzru, Hari (1994). “You are Cyborg”, Wired Magazine, 5.02,
http://www.wired.com/wired/archives/5.02/ffharaway_pr.html