Cyborg Politics: Haraways Cyborg Manifesto

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Cyborg Politics Haraways Cyborg Manifesto

• Principles for Lived Realities
• By Ann C. Kim

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Origins

• The cyborg has its roots in discourses of both
  scientific research and fantasy.

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• The term cyborg was originally created by
  research scientists Manfred Clynes and Nathan
  Kline in 1960 to refer to their conception of a
  technologically enhanced human being who could
  survive in extraterrestrial environments
  (Wikipedia.org)

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As self-regulating man-machine systems,

• Cyborg, or cybernetic organism describes a
  creature that is a hybrid of organic and
  mechanical parts

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Popularized by science fiction,

• Cyborgs are often depicted as
• Technologically enhanced humans, or conversely,
• Automatons incorporating human physical or
  behavioral characteristics

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The cyborg figure, however,

• Embodies more than utopian or dystopian visions
  of human technological progress

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If we reconsider technology so that

• Technology extends beyond material matters of
  mechanized parts, tools and electronic devices

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To encompass

• the abstract, ideological and the procedural

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Then technology

• Consists of all concepts that construct our
  identities and imagination
• Work, Family, Female, Mother, Patriarchy,
  Patriot, God/Man, Man/Animal, Mind/Body,
  Self/Other, etc.

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Including the many systems or processes

• In which we live and act out our lives
• Scientism, Industrialism, Communication
  Networks, Capitalism, Consumerism, Military State

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Thus rather than being stand-alones

• We are thoroughly networked entities
• In truth,
• We are all cyborgs

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In considering

• the implications on our understanding of life,
  space and identity when we refer to ourselves as
  cyborg,

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The cyborg becomes a metaphor,

• One which functions as social critique
• Casting questions on what it means to be alive
  and human
• And in exploring the interrelatedness
• of nature and culture,
• humans and machines,
• myths and realities
• In reflecting upon matters of conscious
  understandings vs. manipulated false
  consciousness

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In viewing ourselves as cyborgs

• Thereby dissolving the boundaries between
  technology, politics and society
• And in disintegrating the traditional
  subject/object, and self/world perspective we
  hold of our various technologies

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We are able to

• Recognize the interrelationships between people
  and technologies,
• And the interconnectedness of all life forms and
  objects

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• The machine is not to be animated, worshipped,
  and dominated. The machine is us, our processes,
  an aspect of our embodiment. We can be
  responsible for machines they do not dominate or
  threaten us. We are responsible for boundaries
  we are they (Haraway, 1991, p. 26)

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As Cyborgs, Haraway calls upon us to

• Override those processes and mechanisms which
  control and limit our thoughts and interactions
  in the world
• from within the very systems we are meshed
  in

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The crux of Cyborg politics

• is the struggle for language and the struggle
  against perfect communication, against the one
  code that translates all meaning perfectly, the
  central dogma of phallogocentrism (1991, p. 23)

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In other words, Cyborg Politics

• Is about resisting the progression of
  technoscience and cyberculture which have been
  underwritten by Western thought,
• a turning away from the traditions that teach
  categorization and dominion over all things

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Cyborg Politics seeks to

• End the assimilation of life, space and time into
  a grand technical network of production and
  reproduction.

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To defy and counter

• hegemonic and multi-national systems of control
  and domination

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Cyborg Politics calls for the reconstruction of
our realities

• And a reversal of the misappropriation of science
  which works to subjugate our minds, bodies and
  way of life

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• The task seems insurmountable
• The forces appear too many and overwhelming

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Still,

• We must get beyond the totality of the beast
• Face the fear.
• Nothing is finished, yet.

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And make conscious choices

• Participate and become involved in rewriting the
  narratives of technoscience
• Reflect and reconstruct possibilities by voicing
  your own perspective and experience of the
  narratives that attempt to prescribe your ways of
  life and being

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Most importantly,

• (And perhaps the most difficult),
• Consider the science and technology storyboard
  from the perspective of those who are made to
  live inside of it, those who are without the
  means or influence to change the plot,
  characters, setting or the dialogues (Olson,
  1996, p.7).
• Practice making meanings in relationship to each
  other (Olson, p.8)

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Become fully wired

• In taking responsibility for the social relations
  of science and technology and
• In reconstructing the boundaries of daily life,
  in partial connection with others, in
  communication with all of our parts (Haraway, p.
  26).

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Haraways Cyborg Manifesto

• Mediates a cultural literacy of the ways in which
  science and technology have always been
  intertwined with political hegemonies

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And scaffolds awareness

• of how the same discourses converge to produce
  systems of domination which all of us are
  inextricably part of.
• By imparting cyborgian consciousness, Haraway
  leaves the responsibility for re-creating
  alternative realities up to each one of us.

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• At the heart of Donna Haraways Cyborg Manifesto
  is the cyborg
• as metaphor for re-envisioning human
  potential and agency

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• Reminding us of the most crucial aspect of human
  technologies
• individual will

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References

• Haraway, D.J. (1991). A cyborg manifesto
  Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in
  the late twentieth century. In D.J. Haraway
  Simians, Cyborgs and Women The Reinvention of
  Nature 149-181. New York Routledge.
• Olsen, G.A. (1996). Writing, literacy and
  technology Toward a cyborg writing. A Journal of
  Composition Theory, 16 (1), 1 26.
• Images from http//office.microsoft.com/clipart/
• http//geekphilosopher.com/
• http//www.pixelperfectdigital.com/
• http//www.picturestation.net/
• Image of Stelarc and Exoskeleton from
  http//www.stelarc.va.com.au/alternate_interfaces/
  aitext.htm
• Image of X-Men Cyclops from http//www.tmbfree.com
  /wallpaper.htm
• Music Gabriels Oboe and On Earth as it is in
  Heaven
• Composed, orchestrated and conducted by Ennio
  Morricone, Performed by the London Philharmonic
  Orchestra