The ur-text of cyberfeminism written by theorist, Donna Haraway. Intended on being an "ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism and materialism", the manifesto is generally applauded for celebrating the cyborg's built-in androgyny as a victory for feminism. Rather than a conventional reading of cyborgs (i.e. "cybernetic organism"), Haraway widens the definition by claiming that;
From this broad definition, Haraway claims that cyborgs are an escape from
repressive system of
dualisms because they are a
transitional space themselves, between
human and
machine,
nature and
culture, and
male and
female. This is where the feminist bit fits in - cyborgs offer an escape from the
dominant hegemony as they resist binary oppositions. From here, the manifesto goes all
pear-shaped, and Haraway spouts a sort of
random poststructuralist poetry. For example:
In a sense, the cyborg has no origin story in the Western sense - a 'final' irony since the cyborg is also the awful apocalyptic telos of the 'West's' escalating dominations of abstract individuation, an ultimate self untied at last from all dependency, a man in space...represented by the phallic mother from whom all humans must separate...the twin potent myths inscribed most powerfully for us in psychoanalysis and Marxism
Having had the
pleasure of seeing Haraway
lecture, she actually does speak this way. For this reason, the manifesto tends to
polarise Cultural Studies academics as either being
brilliant or an elaborate
joke. The fact that
Donna Haraway has forged a successful career in
cyberfeminism suggests that
academics either believe the former, or are
laughing on the inside.
all quotes from Donna Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181. posted online at http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html