Critical Annotated Webliography

Judy Waczman argues that Donna Haraway's figure of the cybord 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?

Second-wave feminism connects female liberation to a woman’s ‘natural’ duty to uphold the integrity of human and natural life on earth through biological reproduction. Donna Haraway employs the idea of the cyborg, which rejects gender binaries, challenging feminists to engage in the issues of feminism beyond naturalism. In seeking out resources for this webliography, it became apparent that Haraway’s idea of the cyborg has been advocated by most feminists, fluctuating into a new brand of third-wave feminism called Cyberfeminism. However, I found that the idea of the cyborg disagrees with the beliefs of second-wave socialist feminists which illustrates a huge jump in broad feminist ideas. In the essay I would aim to demonstrate different points of view in regards to feminism and the cyborg. Using search engines such as Google and Google Scholar and keywords such as cyber-feminism, socialist feminism, gender binaries, post-gender etc and key names such as Sadie Plant, I was able to retrieve useful sources of information which would aide in answering this question. However, a majority of the sources found in this manner were either too vague or unscholarly, but usefully including reference lists and/or citations which led me to more credible sources of information.

Hari Kunzru’s article ‘You are Cyborg’ recounts a conversation with Donna Haraway about the ‘Cyborg Manifesto. In a conversationalist manner, Kunzru’s article then leads on to explain in Haraway’s voice, the key ideas surrounding the technological transformation that diminishes the rigid boundaries between “human” and “machine” and places them as co-inhabitants in the world. The manner in which this article is written, which paints Haraway in a portrait of humble normalcy given Haraway’s postmodern techno-crazy theories, allows for Haraway’s ideas to be more accessible and understandable in comparison to the manner in which the ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ is written. “The cyborg idea may in the end be Donna Haraway's way of showing us how to let folks be folks, rather than carving them up into cruel, arbitrary divisions” Kunzru puts simply. In answering the guiding question, I would use this source to first gain a solid and simple understanding of the cyborg idea, and use it to outline Haraway’s idea of the cyborg at the beginning of the essay providing a sufficient foundation on which to base how feminists have taken up the idea of the cyborg.

Barbara Ehrenreich's article, ‘What is Socialist Feminism’ outlines the principles of socialist feminism and explains their main concern with the social inequalities in gender. Although this article does not include any sort of critique of the cyborg in terms of socialist feminist ideas, I believe its outline of what socialist feminists advocate in terms of feminism to be of importance to illustrate the contrast between second-wave feminism and third-wave feminism. Furthermore, a comparison between then and now in terms of how feminists thought about gender, highlights the progression towards a pos-gender society where gender binaries become obsolete due to the idea of cyborgs, just as Haraway suggests.

In ‘Where is Feminism in Cyberfeminism’, Faith Wilding aims to define and explain the foundations of Cyberfeminism. Wilding demonstrates how Cyberfeminists have taken up Haraway’s idea of the cyborg, and the principles surrounding it and applied it to the internet, an aspect of technology that Haraway herself does not delve into. I found the most relevant sections of the article were the sections on ‘cyber-grrlism' which explains a technological ‘girl-power’ and liberation through a new net utopianism where everything is declared equal, free of any binaries, including gender. “This net utopianism declares cyberspace to be a free space where gender does not matter... In other words, cyberspace is regarded as an arena inherently free of the same old gender relations and struggles.” In my essay, I would use this source to demonstrate how feminists have taken the idea of the cyborg and developed their own ideas, applied it to and analysed it in today’s new technology thus creating a new online utopia that complies with Haraway’s ideas, away from the offline reality where away from technology and the idea of the cyborg gender binaries exist and post-gender does not.

In stark contrast to Wilding’s article on online Cyberfeminism, Susanna Paasonen article, ‘Surfing the Waves of Feminism: Cyberfeminism and its others’ aims to decipher Cyberfeminism’s ambiguous definition and in doing so, questions the principles of Cyberfeminism and critiques its ironic stance on binary thinking. This article offers a contrasting opinion on Cyberfeminism and its principles based on Haraway’s idea of the cyborg. Where Haraway aims to dismantle binary thought, especially in regard to gender, through the idea of the cyborg, Cyberfeminism ironically seems to create more binaries such as old and new feminism, second and third wave, offline and online while offering no alternative forms of thought and location. This article would be particularly useful in questioning the way in which the idea of the cyborg has been taken up by feminists to create Cyberfeminism and “ a new way of thinking”, when instead Cyberfeminism and its adoption of Haraway’s cyborg, is creating new oppositions in replace of the old.

In terms of new binary oppositions being created in place of old ones, one could say that the idea of the cyborg which has inhabited science fiction opposes literature of the non science fiction variety, highlighting where the cyborg and consequently post-gender, does and does not exist. Rosi Braidotti looks at the cyborg in science fiction in her article ‘Feminist Visions on Science Fiction’ and comments on how feminists have looked at science fiction as a way to “assess the impact of the new technological world upon the representation of sexual difference.” Braidotti offers an interesting argument on how science fiction “play[s] with fundamental male anxieties and displace [them] by inventing alternative views of reproduction, thereby manipulating the figure of the female body.” This notion completely removes Cyberfeminists from second-wave feminism which ties itself to naturalism. This article demonstrates through examples taken from popular science fiction, the idea of the cyborg forever changing the generative “purpose” of women which would be particularly useful in demonstrating how the cyborg has changed the ideas of gender and feminism, painting a colorful example of cyberfeminism, cyborgs and new techno science in science fiction itself.

In assessing how feminists have taken up Donna Haraway’s idea of the cyborg, these fives sources aim to look at the most recent and the most present aspects of feminism and their views on the cyborg and its post-gender principles. I chose this approach because I feel that the most important aspect of this question is not of the cyborg, but rather of the ramifications the idea of the cyborg has had on feminism and ideas of gender. Therefore, I have attempted to provide a holistic view of how past waves of feminism (second-wave) has taken up the idea of the cyborg, how present feminism (third-wave) has taken up the idea of the cyborg, of cyberfeminism and the cyborg itself in practice, as well as the critcisms focused on Cyberfeminism.