webliography

Critical Annotated Webliography

Guiding question:

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 feminist?

In answering this question, I decided that I must firstly look at Judy Waczman in order to gain a full understanding to her opinions regarding Donna Haraway’s figure of the cyborg. I also looked at Donna Haraway’s essay, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, to ensure that I completely understood her agreements regarding the cyborg. After doing my backup reading, I began looking at different feminist’s and their opinions regarding Donna Haraway’s article. I gathered my sources through the search engines, Super-search and Google scholar, where I searched such keywords as, ‘cyborg’, ‘Donna Haraway’ and ‘feminism’.

Source 1: You Are Cyborg, written by Hari Kunzru

Hari Kunzru explored the idea of Donna Haraway’s notion of the cyborg. Right from the outset of the article she proclaims that feminists worldwide have taken up the idea of the cyborg in terms of the ability for women and men to think of themselves no merely as an individual but rather as a collection of networks. Kunzru makes constant reference to Haraway’s arguments regarding the idea of the cyborg and how essentially we all belong to a society where it has become somewhat difficult to tell where ‘we’ as an individual end and the machine begins. Humans are constantly surrounded by technology be it a VCR, car or even cell phone, and according to Haraway, the cyborg age is here whether people embrace the idea or not. This idea was further discussed with Kunzru defining what she believed to be Cyberfeminism – the ability to construct your identity, sexuality and even gender in conjunction with technology. While questioning the need to take the whole cyborg idea seriously, Kunzru does give the reader the impression that she agrees with Haraway’s notion of the cyborg.

Source 2: What happened to the Cyborg Manifesto?, by Maria Fernandez and Suhail Malik

In this joint article, both Fernandez and Malik express their own personal reasons as to why they believe the Cyborg Manifesto has not left its mark on history, and furthermore questioning its overall relevance in today’s society. Fernandez argues that Haraway’s manifesto reflected its era, being a time when there were several significant changes in digital technology. She further makes the point that the era when the manifesto was written, saw a time when women were questioning whether they belonged purely to nature, therefore Haraway’s arguments offered an alternative. Fernandez also notes that the Cyborg Manifesto reinforced the popular view that gender could be ‘freed by technology’, in terms of women being given the ability ‘re-generate themselves’. While on the surface this appears like a positive aspect of the Manifesto, Fernandez is quick to discredit this by making it clear the belief that the cyborg has created a creature that is far more fiction than a social reality. Like Fernandez, Malik also doesn’t agree with Haraway’s view of the cyborg. She believes the cyborg to be a creation that encourages the collapse of the ‘traditional bounded stability of the human and its anthropocentric beliefs’. Malik makes it clear that the idea of the transgression of boundaries as discussed by Haraway is unrealistic and believes that clearly the statement was made with giving adequate consideration to the difficulties that are involved in the whole process.

Source 3: The Cyborg, the Scientist, the Feminist and her Critic, by Krista Scott

In this article Scott looks at the rise of the cyborg. She uses several examples to show how the cyborg has developed, be it through the glory of television or the fact that computers can now recognise when one makes a spelling mistake. Essentially Scott discusses how the constant development of technology has led to an improvement in the quality of life for many people. However she does note that she is weary of the fact that there has been a breakdown of certain boundaries for example, between the organism and the machine, with the rise of the cyborg. Scott also discusses the idea that Haraway does not believe in the idea of a goddess rather choosing to follow the idea of the cyborg. Scott herself doesn’t exactly negate from Haraway’s opinions she does however raise some interesting points in terms of Haraway’s argument.

Source 4: Cyber Gender, by Jennifer Breen

Breen’s prominent argument throughout her article is that she believes gender can be altered when on the internet. She evens admits to doing it herself, believing that the internet allows one to disconnect themselves from traditional gender ideals allowing people to move beyond gender with the ability to either select to be male, female or non-gendered. Breen does make reference to Haraway’s ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ in stating that within the manifesto, Haraway’s believed that gender can ultimately be ignored by the cyborg in the future. Haraway’s stance is not followed by Breen, as she believes that while gender online can sometimes be ignored, in most cases people still have to chose their gender, whether it be in a game or when chatting online, gender always comes up. While gender is something we are naturally born with, according to Breen the internet offers a chance for people to change their gender for various reasons.

Source 5: Cyborgs or Goddesses? Becoming divine in a cyberfeminist age, by Elaine Graham

Graham makes the comparison between a goddess and a cyborg. She highlights the significant differences between the two making reference to both Haraway’s arguments regarding the cyborg and also Irigaray’s model of being divine and in a sense a goddess. Graham herself believes that there is much to learn and discover in terms of the cyborg and the goddess, and that our engagement with such ‘semi-mythical creatures’ helps us to rethink our traditional ideals regarding nature, culture and technology. She believes that both the cyborg and goddesses are inter-linked in the sense that they both involve a post-human era and discuss factors that causes one to question traditional categories for example, race, gender, nature and humanity.






Bibliography


1. Breen, Jennifer. ‘Cyber Gender’, (2007)
http://cyborg.org/breen.htm [accessed 26 August 2008].

2. Fernandez, Maria and Malik, Suhail. ‘Whatever Happened to the Cyborg Manifesto?’, Mute Magazine, (2001) http://www.metamute.org/en/Whatever-Happened-to-the-Cyborg-Manifesto [accessed 26 August 2008].

3. Graham, Elaine. ‘Cyborgs or Goddesses? Becoming divine in a cyberfeminist age’ (1999) http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a713768411~db=all~order=page [accessed 26 August 2008].

4. Kunzru, Hari. ‘You Are Cyborg’, Wired Magazine, Issue 5.02, (1997) http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffharaway.html [accessed 26 August 2008].

5. Scott, Krista. 'The Cyborg, the Scientist, the Feminist and her Critic', The Feminist eZine, (1997) http://www.feministezine.com/feminist/philosophy/Cyborg-Scientist-Feminist.html [accessed 26 August 2008].