,,|indent>[
In 1991, Haraway's cyborg manifesto reappeared in a collection of the author's essays titled //Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature//. In a review of this work, Sharon Stephens refers to approaching "the diverse languages" that span Haraway's writing as "a daunting task" (470). This section of //A Map for Cyborgs// attempts to map out several possible trails through the text.
[[What is a cyborg?]]
[[What does Haraway's cyborg do?]]
[[How does the cyborg fit into other academic discourses?->What do others have to say?]]
---
[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
{
(set: $posters to (a: "a creature simultaneously animal and machine, who populates worlds ambiguously natural and crafted (585)", "a coupling between organism and machine, each conceived as coded devices (585)", "a creature in a post-gender world (586)", "Nature and culture reworked; the one can no longer be the resource for appropriation or incorporation by the other (587)", "a creature with no origin story in the Western sense (586)", "[[the illegitimate offspring]] of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism"))
In the first several paragraphs of Haraway's manifesto (and reiterated throughout the text) are various definitions and characteristics of what this cyborg is: (link-repeat: "[(print: $posters's 1st)]<band|")[(replace: ?band)[(set: $posters to (rotated: -1, ...$posters))(print: $posters's 1st)]].
}
[[Check the OED?]]
[[Show me a cyborg.]]
---
[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
[[Hall]]
[[Ruberg, Howe, and Boyd]]
[[Sundén]]
[[Griggers]]
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
Donald E. Hall urges feminists and queer theorists to view the cyborg not only as a complex subject, but as a way to complicate essentialist notions of technology, gender, and sexuality. He calls upon scholars "to view technology not as (simply) a necessary evil or as (only) a destructive force within the contemporary world, but also as engendering a myriad of new identity models and possible positionings." According to Hall, these models and positionings might especially be useful in establishing affinities between "transgender and transsexual identities and embodiments." In addition to viewing the cyborg as a means of disrupting limiting constructions of gender, Hall looks to Haraway's work as a means of complicating notions of sexuality. Technologies have changed the way queer communities exist and operate (through online chatrooms and an abundance of "erotic images and narratives, through phone sex lines and dating services." Like [[Stone]] and [[Hayles]], Hall views the cyborg not only as a vehicle for progress, but as a figure that allows us to recognize changes that have already occurred (cf. [[Ruberg, Howe, and Boyd]]).
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
Bonnie Ruberg, James Howe, and Jason Boyd are interested in the ways that Haraway's cyborg might offer queer theorists a way to critique the emerging field of digital humanities. Like [[Hall]] and other queer theorists, the authors of “Toward a Queer Digital Humanities” view the cyborg as both a reflective and a progressive tool, "poised at the intersection of critique and creation." Thus, the image of the cyborg is central even to their imaginings of what a queer digital humanities might look like: "a playful methodological hybrid of perspectives, tools, and meaning." Ruberg, Howe, and Boyd view the cyborg's disruptive tendencies as not only useful for, but indicative of, queer theory's aims. They go on to say that the relationship between technology and queerness is symbiotic, suggesting "that the interface between human and computing technology might be understood as a space of queer intimacy and relation."
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
Jenny Sundén point to "glitch feminism" as a means to expand the way in which cyborgs might be seen as offering unique insights to the concept of gender performativity. As Sundén points out, the "glitch" represents machinic failure; thus "glitch feminism" is a way "to account for machinic failures in gender within the digital domain." Sundén reflects on artist Isabella Bunny Bennett, a member of the musical group Steam Powered Giraffe, and her performance as a transgender automaton in order to develop this concept. Bennett's portrayal of an automaton incorporates intentional glitches (represented through simulated machinic failures) in order to display her hybrid performance of a cyborg self. Focusing on this metaphor, Sundén states, "Gender, then, is not merely understood as machinery, but also as literally machinic."
---
[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
''[[A Map for Cyborgs->introduction]]''
By [[Jon Heggestad->Standpoint]]
//In order to maneuver through this text, click on the links that are highlighted in teal. (Links that appear in yellow indicate that you've already viewed the linked passage.) You can also go back and forth through the passages that you’ve previously selected by clicking on the “undo” and “redo” arrows that will appear at the top-left corner of the screen (above [[the image of the cyborg->Women workers]]).//
]
|indent>[
Among the many tasks that a cyborg //does//, Haraway portrays this figure as one which [[writes]], [[creates new myths]], and [[enacts political work]].
(link-undo: "Go back")
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]|indent>[
The political work that a cyborg conducts (and the need for this work) is laid out clearly in Haraway’s rendering of two possible cyborgian future. In the first, the cyborg represents “the final appropriation of women’s bodies in [[a masculinist orgy of war->a masculinist view]]” (590). This is not the future she envisions, however. Through the figure of the cyborg, Haraway also imagines a way to depict “lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of [[permanently partial identities]] and contradictory standpoints” (590). This second vision is one which Haraway (along with [[many other theorists->Feminist Theory]]) is willing to rally behind, viewing the cyborg as a means of rejecting a [[master code]] of patriarchal control.
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]|indent>[
Writing is the technology of cyborgs (596). If dualisms are at the root of every power structure (ultimately traced back to self/other), then part of the cyborg’s political work is to [[write themselves]] into the blurred boundaries.
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[Click below to see examples of cyborgs referenced by Haraway and others.
(set: $cards to (a: "RoboCop", "Inspector Gadget", "Women workers", "Terminator", "Cyborg", "skin", "Prosthetics", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", "The Female Man", "Cyborg Superman"))
(set: $read to (shuffled: ...$cards))
(link: "Cyborgs in the flesh (and circuits).")[(goto: 1st of $read)]
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]|indent>[
Cyborgs (and the political myth they constructed) are produced by the breakdown of three boundaries:
1. Human and animal
2. Animal-human (organism) and machine
3. Physical and non-physical (a subset of the last distinction)
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]
|indent>[
In this era of the "informatics of domination," a communication breakdown is the greatest threat, but Haraway says the cyborg thrives in the face of such a threat. It's crossing boundaries allows it to thrive in the midst of chaotic technologies. it rejects a [[master code]] while embracing [[a framented and divided self->Braidotti]].
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
According to Haraway, the central dogma of phallogocentrism is the idea that there is “one code that translates all meaning perfectly" (597). A cyborg, however, is not one unified self, but [[many]].
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
Haraway looks to the cyborg as a way to bridge the paradox presented by many feminist theorists. There are many, often divided, forms of feminism, and these forms often annex one another. Haraway wants to account for these differences while also establishing a semblance of unity. She suggests that an affinity might be formed in opposition to what she calls “the informatics of domination” (593). This is a postmodern shift, and with it comes the breakdown of many old dichotomies, including that between “mind and body, animal and human, organism and machine, public and private, nature and culture, men and women, primitive and civilized” (595). The role of the cyborg is to code this “disassembled and reassembled post-modern collective and personal self” (595). It breaks down a master code, allows for a plural subjectivity, and suggests the idea of assemblage, which later writers like Rosi [[Braidotti]] and Jasbir [[Puar]] will return to.
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
Haraway acknowledges that cyborgs are born from a problematic background, but she argues that they might easily be excused from these less-than-ideal beginnings: “[I]llegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential” (587). This is the fear represented in every account of the impending Singularity, that predicted inevitability at which technology will turn against us.
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
The OED defines "cyborg" as "[a] fictional or hypothetical person whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal human limitations by mechanical elements built into the body."
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
The skin has often been thought of as our bodies' "natural" boundary. But technology complicates this, as scholars like Sandy Stone, Sherry Turkle, and Lev Manovich have shown. Where does embodiment end? Can a walking stick be part of your body? A hearing aid? When you speak on the phone, you can feel your interlocuter's presence. Do they end at the skin? Or do they end at the receiver?
<img src="https://assets.pcmag.com/media/images/504455-how-to-talk-to-a-live-person.jpg" width=400>
(set: $cards to (a: "RoboCop", "Inspector Gadget", "Women workers", "Terminator", "Cyborg", "Prosthetics", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", "The Female Man", "Cyborg Superman"))
(set: $read to (shuffled: ...$cards))
(link: "More cyborgs.")[(goto: 1st of $read)]
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
The last section of Haraway's manifesto pays tribute to feminist sci-fi writers like Joanna Russ, James Tiptree, Jr., and Octavia Butler, who have all contributed to a clearer illustration of what the cyborg is and what her responsibilities are. “Monsters have always defined the limits of community in Western imaginations," Haraway states. "Cyborg monsters in feminist science fiction define quite different political possibilities and limits from those proposed by the mundane fiction of Man and Woman” (600). As [[other theorists->Makinen]] have suggested, science fiction offers alternative worlds to readers and writers alike, that they might explore new possibilities and imagine new futures.
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
As I've noted already, "A Cyborg Manifesto" has made a huge impact since its original publication. While [[many have expanded upon Haraway's work]] as a foundation for their own, [[other scholars have taken issue]] with ways in which the cyborg (a natural writer, according to Haraway) might, in fact, be writing over other (and often Othered) experiences.
At the same time, however, it's important to remember that the cyborg, despite representing new forms of subjectivity, did not emerge from a vacuum. As Haraway comments, [[the cyborg has a lineage]], even if it's not always loyal to it.
---
[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
Donna Haraway begins her [[manifesto->A Cyborg Manifesto]] by envisioning it as a work that maps out the cyborg: “I am making an argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings" (586). From here, Haraway then goes on to explore how one of the cyborg's most poignant characteristics is its ability to cross boundaries - the boundary between human and machine, between human and animal, physical and non-physical. Like many of Haraway's claims, these ideas seem paradoxical. How can one map out a figure characterized by its transgression of boundaries? In //A Map for Cyborgs//, I'll be exploring this [[boundary-crossing figure->What is a cyborg?]] through [[a rhizomatic mapping project->narrative and database]] on the [[Twine]] platform.
Before going on, it might be useful to ask the following question: [[What's gained in making this project digital? What's lost?->What's lost?]]
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
While many scholars have viewed narratives and databases as oppositional to one another, with narratives being swallowed up by increased modes of constructing digital databases, N. Katherine Hayles views the two as symbiotic, showing that databases allow for the creation of new narratives which are, in turn, stored in databases. This mapping project reflects this symbiotic relationship. Certainly, dominant narratives are constructed through the process of connecting these cyborgian fragments, but [[Twine]]'s hyperlinked structure allows for a wider range of narratives to be constructed, and (in this way) //A Map for Cyborgs// embraces this symbiotic relationship that Hayles outlines.
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
Twine is an online storytelling platform. While it is primarily used for creating digital fiction, I'm utilizing the software's interactive interface (think web pages) to construct a digital essay that offers readers a means of constructing their own [[narrative->narrative and database]] to better understand the contexts surrounding the cyborg. In this sense, //A Map for Cyborgs// is a “playable” academic work. Its form reflects its content. The project is //like// the cyborg in that it plays with the concept of boundaries, fragments a stable reading, and offers new opportunities for writing oneself.
]|indent>[
I'm writing this as a queer, white male scholar. I'm writing as a graduate student with an English department as my disciplinary home. I'm writing with a vested interest in [[interdisciplinary]] projects (like this one). I'm writing with the goal of making learning feel enjoyable and exciting. As a cis, white male student, I receive certain privileges - some of which I'm aware of and some of which might still be invisible to me. My work with cyborg figures means that I’m coming //alongside// other scholars and not speaking //for// them. As a queer scholar, the idea of crossing boundaries is one I’m familiar with. A constant tension in my work is to offer new narratives without drowning out others'.
---
[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
Like Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick clarifies in her introduction to //Novel Gazing//, I, too, am thinking through a variety of lenses: queer, feminist, New Historical. Other theoretical lenses (such as psychoanalysis) work for me as an object of study, rather than as a framework that I, myself, use. My invested interest in interdisciplinarity is perhaps made most visible in the texts I work with; the short list above indicates an interest in feminist and queer theory that often takes root in illustrations from Victorian literature. In addition to these fields, I look to the emerging field of digital humanities (perhaps it’s already emerged). In thinking about my own interventions, I've constructed the following equation that is also, at times, a mantra: the subject is queer; the tools are digital.
---
[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
I'd like to point out that my project reflects Haraway's in its choice of article: //a//. This project offers //a// reading of Haraway's work in the same way that Haraway is offering //a// means of understanding female subjectivity through the figure of the cyborg. Neither the original text nor this work that expands upon it are meant to be regarded as definitive or prescriptive. I might note, however, that in many ways this digital project actually offers not //a// reading, but [[several->narrative and database]].
---
[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
In the thirty years since the publication of Donna Haraway’s essay, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” (1985), it has found its way into an endless number of anthologies and emergent discourses. //A Map for Cyborgs// is an exploratory project that aims to accompany, contextualize, and shed light upon Haraway's work. Through this project, I offer [[a]] breakdown of her writing and an overview of how this works fits into a larger range of feminist texts.
In order to navigate through this text, simply click on terms that appear in blue. These terms will take you to linked passages, through which you will be able to construct your own path through the novel.
[[More on methodology.->Methodology]]
[[More on Haraway's cyborg.->A Cyborg Manifesto]]
[[More on the context and reception of the cyborg manifesto.->What do others have to say?]]
---
[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
Haraway states that she in constructing an ironic (or "blasphemous") political myth through her manifesto. It is “faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism,” and at its center is the image of the cyborg (1). The cyborg is most marked by its ambiguity, its [[breaking]] of the machine/human boundary. Haraway's call to readers is twofold; she tells us to take ''pleasure'' (“in the confusion of boundaries”) and ''responsibility'' (“in their construction,” i.e. the construction of those boundaries).
---
[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
In //Dickens in Cyberspace//, Jay Clayton Victorian telegraphists as prototypes of Haraway's cyborg, seen, for example in Henry James’s novella //In the Cage//. As with other labor forces behind great shifts in information management and communication, this one was predominantly made up by female workers.
---
[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
In their pivotal work examining women's writing in the Victorian age, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar identify what might be viewed as a precursor to the cyborg in the titular figure, the madwoman in the attic. This work opens with an analysis of Snow White and the evil queen (“The Queen’s Looking Glass”), in which the authors identify these characters as a binary enforced on 19th-century British women. These figures are illustrated (by men) as either saints or villains. Many works by female authors at this time tried to break this dichotomy. In //Jane Eyre//, for example, Charlotte Brontë depicts this stark (and, for //many// reasons, problematic) contrast in the figures of Helen Burns (a saintly child) and Bertha Mason (a vampiric madwoman), before offering the novel's protagonist the option of settling somewhere between these poles. In this way, Gilbert and Gubar show that Jane Eyre, herself, is somewhat of a monstrous figure, refusing to identify through the simplistic and limited options society attempts to force upon her. They trace this monstrous type of woman back to female characters like Errour and Duessa in Spencer's //The Faerie Queene//. One also might look forward, however, and view this breaking of boundaries (not a total rejection, nor a full embrace of either sainthood or villainy) as a preview of the cyborg's existence. According to Gilbert and Gubar, men had hoped that female art would keep silent, but figures like Jane Eyre and the cyborg push through the boundaries imposed upon them. Depending on the reader's perspective, this breaking of boundaries offers either new myths, new threats, or perhaps both.
---
[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
Haraway identifies Joanna Russ's novel, //The Female Man//, as a feminist science fiction populated by images of the cyborg. The narrative is divided between a number of female characters (Joanna, Janneane, Janet, and Jael) who are eventually revealed to be versions of one another from different realities. Thus, female subjectivity is depicted as fragmented and divided (as later theorists, like Rosi Braidotti will observe). Haraway observes that "where characters refuse the reader's search for innocent wholeness," //The Female Man// does offer readers "heroic quests, exuberant eroticism, and serious politics."
<img src="https://femscifi.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/femaleman.jpg" width=300>
(set: $cards to (a: "RoboCop", "Inspector Gadget", "Women workers", "Terminator", "Cyborg", "skin", "Prosthetics", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", "Cyborg Superman"))
(set: $read to (shuffled: ...$cards))
(link: "More cyborgs.")[(goto: 1st of $read)]
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
As is evident in the title of //How We Became Posthuman//, N. Katherine Hayles is interested in playing with the idea that those living in the digital age are //already// cyborgs, and that they have (in fact) been cyborgs for quite some time. After mentioning a number of devices (prosthetics) that might be considered to still be within the boundary of a person's self despite their being separate in other respects (a blind man's walking stick, a deaf man's hearing aid), Hayles refers to Haraway's theory of cyborgs as a way to expound upon the disruptions of boundaries that the manifesto introduces: "Fusing cybernetic device and biological organism, the cyborg violates the human/machine distinction; replacing cognition with neural feedback, it challenges the human-animal difference; explaining the behavior of thermostats and people through theories of feedback, hierarchical structure, and control, it erases the animate/inanimate distinction" (84). Hayles observes that cyborgs produce both anxiety and desire, as in the case of the female cyborg in //Blade Runner//, based off of Philip K. Dick's novel [[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]]. Elaborating on this anxiety, Hayles observes that a sense of fear or panic develops over the boundary produced by the cyborg's allure. What exactly is the boundary that's being crossed? As the construction of gender is made more visible in developing fields of artificial intelligence, how can a man (for Hayles, like many of her predecessors is viewing the colonizing mechanic as male) know whether or not the narrative (which follows his attempts to teach AI how to imitate humanity - the emphasis being on //man// here) is a homoerotic one?
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]|indent>[
Rachel from //Blade Runner// (1982), based on the character from Philip K. Dick's //Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?// (1968).
<img src="https://entropymag.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/rachel_blade-runnersmall.jpg" width=600>
(set: $cards to (a: "RoboCop", "Inspector Gadget", "Women workers", "Terminator", "Cyborg", "skin", "Prosthetics", "The Female Man", "Cyborg Superman"))
(set: $read to (shuffled: ...$cards))
(link: "More cyborgs.")[(goto: 1st of $read)]
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]|indent>[
In “Queer Posthumanism: Cyborgs, Animals, Monsters, Perverts," Patricia MacCormack elaborates on why the cyborg is often viewed as a threatening figure. According to her, the cyborg is not an extension of the flesh; in this way, she diverges from theorists like Hayles. Rather than seeing the cyborg as a type of prosthetic (extending the flesh and, by proxy, humanity), MacCormack views the cyborg as a threat. Echoing Haraway's depiction of the cyborg's breaking allegiance with its forefathers, MacCormack shows that the fear posed by the cyborg is in its potential to "colonize" the flesh (119).
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]|indent>[
Many comic book characters have been built upon the idea of the cyborg. At the beginning of //The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics//, Ramzi Fawaz offers an account of Superman's death in the DC Comics Universe in 1992. In the narrative following this death, four figures emerged to take Superman's place. These characters represented “four primary figures of the American culture wars: minorities, cyborgs, aliens, and teenagers.” According to Fawaz, superheroes before WWII were originally illustrated as do-gooders or patriots whose powers were "natural extensions of their body," while postwar heroes were depicted as cultural outsiders, having "gained their abilities from radioactive exposure, technological enhancement, and genetic manipulation." Celebrating these differences, they became figures for "international human rights, civil rights, and women’s and gay liberation." Through //The New Mutants//, Fawaz shows how “postwar comic books used fantasy to describe and validate previously unrecognizable forms of political community by popularizing figures of monstrous difference whose myriad representations constituted a repository of cultural tools for a renovated liberal imaginary.” Thus, while cyborgian characters are most visibly evident in characters like the clearly named [[Cyborg]] and [[Cyborg Superman]], Fawaz shows that a great number of superheroes actually depict the type of boundary-crossing and prosthetic-blurring that Haraway considers as an essential component of cyborgian identity and politics. Worth noting, however, is that many of these illustrated representations actually depict [[a masculinist view]] of technology; few (if any) of these superheroes are women.
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]|indent>[
Cyborg from DC Comics, first introduced in 1980.
<img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/58/Cyborg_%28Victor_Stone%29.jpg" width=300>
(set: $cards to (a: "RoboCop", "Inspector Gadget", "Women workers", "Terminator", "skin", "Prosthetics", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", "The Female Man", "Cyborg Superman"))
(set: $read to (shuffled: ...$cards))
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]|indent>[
Cyborg Superman from DC Comics (not to be confused with DC's Cyborg), first introduced in 1990.
<img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2a/Cyborg_Superman_%28Hank_Henshaw%29.jpg" width=300>
(set: $cards to (a: "RoboCop", "Inspector Gadget", "Women workers", "Terminator", "Cyborg", "skin", "Prosthetics", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", "The Female Man"))
(set: $read to (shuffled: ...$cards))
(link: "More cyborgs.")[(goto: 1st of $read)]
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]|indent>[
Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a cyborg assassin in the 1984 film //The Terminator//.
<img src="http://www.gstatic.com/tv/thumb/v22vodart/7764/p7764_v_v8_ab.jpg" width=400>
(set: $cards to (a: "RoboCop", "Inspector Gadget", "Women workers", "Cyborg", "skin", "Prosthetics", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", "The Female Man", "Cyborg Superman"))
(set: $read to (shuffled: ...$cards))
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]|indent>[
Peter Weller plays a cyborg law enforcer in the 1987 film //RoboCop//.
<img src="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZWVlYzU2ZjQtZmNkMi00OTc3LTkwZmYtZDVjNmY4OWFmZGJlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTQxNzMzNDI@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,644,1000_AL_.jpg" width=400>
(set: $cards to (a: "Inspector Gadget", "Women workers", "Terminator", "Cyborg", "skin", "Prosthetics", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", "The Female Man", "Cyborg Superman"))
(set: $read to (shuffled: ...$cards))
(link: "More cyborgs.")[(goto: 1st of $read)]
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
Inspector Gadget has several parallels to [[RoboCop]], but this cyborg detective is the title figure of a children's entertainment franchise, which began in 1983.
<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/teepublic/image/private/s--At3kWORh--/t_Preview/b_rgb:ffb81c,c_limit,f_jpg,h_630,q_90,w_630/v1506138926/production/designs/1924683_1.jpg" width=400>
(set: $cards to (a: "RoboCop", "Women workers", "Terminator", "Cyborg", "skin", "Prosthetics", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", "The Female Man", "Cyborg Superman"))
(set: $read to (shuffled: ...$cards))
(link: "More cyborgs.")[(goto: 1st of $read)]
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[
Of vital importance in examining how the figure of the cyborg has continued to develop since the publication of Haraway's manifesto is Claudia Springer’s work, “The Pleasure of the Interface.” It is an examination of how the cyborg has taken on multiple concepts depending on one's stake in the outcome of gender and sexuality debates: "one can look to the cyborg to provide either liberation or annihilation" (323). Springer refers to the emerging climate of the digital age as an odd paradox, in which bodies are becoming "obsolete" thanks to computer technology (echoing the masculinist dream of a Cartesian divide); yet, at the same time, bodies are being reproduced and replicated in new ways, thanks to technological advancements: "Popular culture has appropriated the scientific project; but instead of effacing the human body, these texts intensify corporeality in their representation of cyborgs. A mostly technological system is represented as its opposite: a muscular human body with robotic parts that heighten physicality and sexuality. In other words, these contemporary texts represent a future where human bodies are on the verge of becoming obsolete but sexuality nevertheless prevails" (304). This, too, is a kind of monstrous construction.
And yet, the cyborg deconstructs (or at least complicates) visible power structures. Springer depicts this in her claim that the cyborg breaks the binary of being controller or controlled: "While robots represent the acclaim and fear evoked by industrial age machines for their ability to function independently of humans, cyborgs incorporate rather than exclude humans, and in so doing erase the distinctions previously assumed to distinguish humanity from technology" (306). The pleasure referenced in the title of her essay comes from this erasure. Springer approaches this process from a Lacanian perspective, where one is lead into the pleasure of obliterating one's own bodies through technology. Continuing her psychoanalytical reading, Springer observes that the cyborg we find in popular culture effectively fuses the two desires that Freud has described: the death wish and the pleasure principle.
Her conclusion echoes the binaries/paradoxes that Haraway outlined earlier in her manifesto; Springer states, "Neither alive nor dead, the cyborg in popular culture is constituted by paradoxes: its contradictions are its essence, and its vision of a discordant future is in fact a projection of our own conflictual present" (322).
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
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According to Claudia Springer, most works of cyberpunk fiction continue to reinscribe masculinist gender boundaries. Patriarchy is upheld! It is "more willing to dispense with human life [(male bodies)] than with male superiority" (318). This is because cyborgs represent not only a crossing of boundaries, but an intense crisis in the construction of masculinity. This is why men are often involved with technological reproduction, whereas women are associated with biological reproduction. This gender difference plays into the //Frankenstein// tradition, in which AI threatens the lives of its creators.
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
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Haraway points out the important role that the cyborg has played in science fiction. In //Feminist Popular Fictions//, Merja Makinen picks up this claim, offering an overview of feminist science fiction writers. According to Makinen, the cyborg was reclaimed from those who had used it to reinscribe [[a masculinist trajectory->a masculinist view]] in early SF texts. She suggests that writers like C.L. Moore and James Tiptree, Jr. were among the first to employ the cyborg in depicting new subjectivities. Elaborating on the contexts surrounding feminist and masculinist approaches to sf, she highlight a distinction that emerged in the 1970s between between hard sf (which focused on technology) and soft sf (which focused on "psychology, sociology, and feminist critiques") (136). This distinction continued into the '80s, when cyberpunk emerged as a subgenre, bringing about such vastly different works as William Gibson's //Neuromancer// and Pat Cadigan's //Synners//. Comparing these works, Makinen states, "With the cyborg, cyberpunk's celebration of [[masculinity->a masculinist view]] is contrasted to feminists' use of it to reconfigure self and other into new kinds of subjectivity" (149). Makinen depicts a wider range of cyborgian representation, but this range nevertheless allows for "a politics of the margins" (141).
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
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Cyberpunk texts often depict a penetrative "plugging in," as bodies enter into cyberspace, but Sandy Stone says that ultimately "penetration translates into envelopment" (37). Expanding on this idea in her essay, “Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?," Stone states, "In other words, to enter cyberspace is to physically put on cyberspace. To become the cyborg, to put on the seductive and dangerous cybernetic space like a garment, is to put on the female." While playing with the idea that cyberspace is like a garment (and textiles, Haraway notes, offer an example of traditionally female industry), Stone also shows how cyberspace disrupts binaristic views of gender and sexuality. The cyborg habitat is one which is both penetrated and penetrative.
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
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Anne Balsamo is interested in deconstructing the cyborg in her own work, //Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women//. Noting that the cyborg gets its name from the term "cybernetic organism" (18), Balsamo goes on to explore this figure’s technological and organic aspects. She views the cyborg as uniquely capable of disrupting the dualism that sets "the natural body in opposition to the technologically recrafted body" (11). According to her, this is the reason why cyborgs pose a threat to society: "Cyborg bodies are definitionally transgressive of a dominant culture order, not so much because of their 'constructed' nature, but rather because of the indeterminacy of their hybrid design" (11). This crossing of boundaries causes men panic, and it’s this panic which makes the cyborg such a poignant figure. Balsamo observes that this is the reason why Haraway "maps the identity of woman onto the image of the cyborg" (34). Theorists like [[Hayles]], [[Springer]], and [[MacCormack]] will return to this form of panic.
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
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Rosi Braidotti hones in on the way that the cyborg might represent a form of plural subjectivity. In the fourth chapter of //Nomadic Subjects//, Braidotti refers to several writers of //écriture féminine// (including Irigaray and Cixous) in order to unpack the idea that the female subject is not singular. From here, Braidotti observes that subjectivity was emphasized increasingly as a process throughout the 1990s (99). She points to Deleuze in thinking about a rhizomatic mode of dealing with this paradox, saying, "Deleuze aims at [...] the affirmation of difference in terms of a multiplicity of possible differences" (100). According to Braidotti, Haraway echoes and exemplifies this idea as it relates to contemporary feminist theory. //A Cyborg Manifesto// depicts the cyborg as //meant// to embrace these paradoxes or contradictions. Indeed, the cyborg is "a way of thinking specificity without falling into relativism. The cyborg is Haraway's representation of a generic feminist humanity" (105). While Braidotti's logic is useful for better understanding a cyborgian subjectivity, representing a plurality within an individual figure is also potentially problematic. This is a concern that [[many other feminist scholars->Moya]] have independently addressed.
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
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Paula M. L. Moya regards Haraway's cyborg as a "theoretical misappropriation of women of color" (788). She criticizes Haraway for appropriating the text of Chicana activist and theorist Cherríe Moraga without actually "attending to her theoretical insights." Expressing a concern that Haraway is not fully aware of the Mexcian/Chicana history and culture that she references in her manifesto, Moya views her "misreading" as a way in which Haraway, rather than reaffirming Chicana idenitity, continues to marginalize it. At the same time, however, Moya views the conflation of "women of color" and "cyborg" as a way to write over, "in overly idealized terms," the actual positionality and existence of Chicanas (790).
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Cathy Griggers claims that lesbians have already become cyborgs. In “Lesbian Bodies in the Age of (Post)mechanical Reproduction,” Griggers refers to the use of strap-on dildos and other sex toys as a kind of prosthetic technology. She suggests that Haraway's manifesto might offer lesbians a way to “mobilize for further developing alliance-based, unintegrated networks of power in the cultural fame of identity politics,” saying that lesbians already have a history of “playing with body assemblages” (188). As an early work of queer theory (this text appeared in the foundational collection of essays, //Fear of a Queer Planet//, edited by Michael Warner), this writing suggests new and exciting trajectories for queer politics; yet, it accomplishes this at the risk of universalizing lesbian experience.
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
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In “‘I Would Rather Be a Cyborg than a Goddess’: Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory,” Jasbir Puar position Haraway’s cyborg in opposition to intersectionality. According to Puar, Haraway actually made this distinction in her own work. In her claim that she would rather be "a cyborg than a goddess," Puar argues that Haraway expresses a preference which favors "the postmodern technologized figure of techno-human over the reclamation of a racialized, matriarchal past, thus implicitly invoking this binary between intersectionality and assemblage” (600). This latter term, Puar points out, is often traced back to Deleuze and Guattari, who used "assemblage" to emphasize relations, not content. Thus, the cyborg tends to neglect content, i.e., (as Puar aims to show, echoing earlier theorists who have critiqued Haraway's appropriation of "women of color," cf. [[Moya]]) the cyborg neglects the actual, lived experience of these women. Furthermore, Puar finds that, despite its efforts to break binaristic modes of thinking, Haraway reinscribes a dichotomy between body and technology. Returning to Haraway's claim regarding the cyborg (culture) and the goddess (nature) that appears at the start of her essay (and the end of Haraway's), Puar asks, “[W]hy disaggregate the two when there surely must be cyborgian goddesses in our midst? Now that is a becoming-intersectional assemblage that I could really appreciate” (606).
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A potential shortcoming of this project might be that it doesn’t make the kind of traditional argument that an academic paper is expected to. In “How a Prototype Argues,” however, Alan Galey and Stan Ruecker state that a digital project still does (or, at least, ought to) make some form of argument. In the case of //A Map for Cyborgs//, I can think of two main claims that are being made:
[[1.]] Complex theoretical works might be better understood if depicted through a [[database->narrative and database]] framework.
[[2.]] Digital projects might actually be used to slow down the academic culture of haste.
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
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As an aside, I’d like to note that I am intentionally using plural pronouns with singular subjects. I do this for two reasons. First, language evolves. As the gender binary (slowly) gives way to a wider range of gender identities, language will and should change to reflect this. Thus, whereas the blurring of plural and singular subjects and pronound has been seen as incorrect in the past, “they” is now a perfectly acceptable term when referring to a singular subject. Second, to view the “singular” subject as plural actually reflects [[cyborgian concepts of subjectivity->Braidotti]], which view the subject not as one, but as many.
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1. Complex theoretical works might be better understood if depicted through a [[database->narrative and database]] framework. As I’ve observed in my section on methodology, databases lend themselves to the reader’s finding [[their]] own way through the text. Thus, this project argues that allowing a reader to map out their own narrative through a complex theoretical concept might be the most useful means of presenting this material.
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Academia is (lamentably) gaining speed. As Barbara K. Seeber and Maggie Berg observe in their work, //The Slow Professor//, academia is increasingly a culture of haste. Digital Humanities is often seen as the best (or worst) example of this. In //Planned Obsolescence//, Kathleen Fitzpatrick questions how it's possible to expect scholars to keep up with current technological advancements? Yet, by focusing narrowly and in-depth on the concept of the cyborg, I’m arguing that digital projects might also be useful for slowing down the academic process. In addition to offering readers a wider range of narratives, the database is also useful in suggesting that readers pace themselves at their own pace. A rhizomatic database (as opposed to a traditional narrative) anticipates a digital flâneur (cf. Manovich, boyd). This caters to the way we read digital texts. According to N. Katherine Hayles, computers have actually changed the way we read. The patterns of our eye movements are different. The way we approach a text is different. Hayles refers to this often cursory tendency to read the "surface" of digital screens as hyper readings (a kind of distance reading). A digital project, like //A Map for Cyborgs//, that is scattered across an interface like rocks skipping the surface of a lake thus anticipates and even utilizes this new mode of reading.
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
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The cyborg has been taken up by a wide range of scholars, scattered across disciplines. Perhaps this should be expected; if the cyborg is a figure that crosses boundaries, why wouldn't it be one that crosses academic disciplines as well? While both [[feminist theorists->Feminist Theory]] and [[queer theorists->Queer Theory]] have looked to the cyborg as a figure which offers useful frameworks as well as potential narratives for the future, many [[literary scholars]] have considered how the cyborg has taken root in a variety of literary forms and genres, examining its presence in [[comic books->Fawaz]], [[science fiction->Makinen]], and (specifically) [[cyberpunk fiction->Stone]].
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While many scholars have regarded the cyborg as a means for restructuring narratives of female experience and subjectivity, others have questioned whether or not this newer affinity actually does harm to already marginalized groups. This critique is conveyed by both Paula M. L. [[Moya]] and Jasbir [[Puar]].
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Despite her acknowledgement that the cyborg does, in fact, have a past, Haraway doesn't give much space to this idea in her work. In thinking about the cyborg's origins, [[Jay Clayton]] offers examples of what he refers to as "proto-cyborgs." Elsewhere, [[Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar->Gilbert and Gubar]] have outlined figures and tropes in women's writing from the nineteenth century, which also might be useful for thinking about earlier renderings of this boundary-crossing figure.
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[[Springer]]
[[Hayles]]
[[MacCormack]]
[[Stone]]
[[Sundén]]
[[Balsamo]]
[[Braidotti]]
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
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Gesturing to the "unnatural cyborg women making chips in Asia," Haraway highlights female workers as frequently embodying the kind of cyborgian identity and politics she discusses throughout her manifesto. The image featured in the design of this project's interface (the image of a cyborg at a weaving loom) pays homage to the lineage outlined by Haraway that traces female workers through industries of textiles and information management. However, [[many later scholars->Moya]] have responded to this outline, viewing it as too cursory, misinformed in its oversimplification of "women of color."
<img src="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/images/06/14/computer.chips.jpg" width=400>
Image source from CNN.
(set: $cards to (a: "RoboCop", "Inspector Gadget", "Terminator", "Cyborg", "skin", "Prosthetics", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", "The Female Man", "Cyborg Superman"))
(set: $read to (shuffled: ...$cards))
(link: "More cyborgs.")[(goto: 1st of $read)]
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[[introduction]] | [[haraway->A Cyborg Manifesto]] | [[context->What do others have to say?]]
]|indent>[Prosthetics (in a general sense).
“Why should our bodies end at the [[skin]], or include at best other beings encapsulated by skin? [...] For us, in imagination and in other practice, machines can be prosthetic devices, intimate components, friendly selves” (598).
<img src="https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-79941488bbf0b927b315288c892b4ce7-c
" width=400>
(set: $cards to (a: "RoboCop", "Inspector Gadget", "Women workers", "Terminator", "Cyborg", "skin", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", "The Female Man", "Cyborg Superman"))
(set: $read to (shuffled: ...$cards))
(link: "More cyborgs.")[(goto: 1st of $read)]
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[[Makinen]]
[[Stone]]
[[Fawaz]]
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]