Summary A Cyborg Manifesto

Summary for Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” In 1984, Donna Haraway published her essay titled “A Cyborg Manifesto”, which is part of a series of multiple other essays, that all revolve around similar topics having to do with feminism. This particular essay is taking a rather critical look at traditional feminism and the connection between humans and animals or machines in regards to that, by introducing her idea of change the cyborg. The text counts as an important written piece for the development of feminist posthumanist theory. In this essay I will be taking a closer look at Haraway’s text and summarize it to the best of my abilities. But before that it should be said that not everything in this essay should be taken to literal, as Haraway herself calls it an “ironic political myth” (p. 315, “A Cyborg Manifesto”, Donna Haraway, 1984). An important thing that should be established before getting deeper into the text is what this in the title mentioned “cyborg” even is. Donna Haraway defines cyborgs as hybrids of people, animals and mechanisms that are the offspring of militarism and masculinist culture. They are the only ones that will be able to guide humanity to a future full of equality and end human domination. They are the only ones able to do this because contrary to us humans they are not influenced by prejudice or stereotypes. She mentions that they have no idea what religion actually is, which helps them to not be limited in their actions, as they are not afraid of any judgement or punishment by God. Starting her essay Haraway points out three distinctions she believes allowed her cyborg myth to exist, the first being the distinction between human and animal, secondly the breakdown between animal-human and machine, and lastly the distinction between physical and non-physical. Over the years evolution has led to a blurred line between humans and animals, the progress of machines has blurred the lines between natural and artificial, and electronics tested the lines of physicality. Haraway uses the cyborg as a way to tell everyone that traditional gender, feminism and politics may be limited, but that there is a way to overcome those limitations and that way would be reached through the fusion between animal and machine. This “manifesto” is a critique of traditional notions of feminism, in particular feminists who focus a lot on identity politics, which is a tendency for people of a particular religion, race and more, to form exclusive non-traditional political alliances. She suggests that feminists should expand their views away from essentialism and naturalism, as their identity political views exclude many. Haraway mentions that the cyborgs apparently call for a coalition through affinity, which basically means to form political parties based on natural liking and understanding of someone or something. And that the cyborgs will end human domination and change many other things that are wrong with the current society, by recoding communication and politics through grammar. Throughout the essay Haraway constantly addresses the feminists telling them to cast aside and revise their concepts of gender, because those are part of the past, as the cyborg will bring the aforementioned change and end traditionalism and stereotypes, she even details these changes in a chart on page 325 of her essay. Donna Haraway’s essay is very interesting to read and introduces many new angles to view things and I agree with her on many points regarding gender and the changes that need to be made, but overall, I do believe the whole essay to be a bit much. I couldn’t really take it seriously because I felt like I was reading a very abstract script for a science fiction movie, but I do recognize that it is a very interesting concept which can definitely be applied to many other contexts, but it just wasn’t the right text for me and could have been executed better.