A Cyborg Manifesto
Haraway begins the "Manifesto" by explaining three boundary breakdowns since the 20th century that have allowed for her hybrid, cyborg myth: those between human and animal, animal-human and machine, and physical and non-physical.
These traditions in turn allow for the problematic formations of taxonomies (and identifications of the Other) and what Haraway explains as "antagonistic dualisms" that order Western discourse.
These dualisms, Haraway states, "have all been systematic to the logics and practices of domination of women, people of color, nature, workers, animals... all [those] constituted as others."
Instead, Haraway's cyborg calls for a non-essentialized, material-semiotic metaphor capable of uniting diffuse political coalitions along the lines of affinity rather than identity.
Haraway mentions Octavia Butler, John Varley, and Vonda McIntyre as authors/artists whose work constitute a feminist science fiction of cyborg stories.
The first future, which aligns with the view point taken by socialist and radical feminism, is that the breaking down of the boundary between the organism and technology will represent the final conquering of the oppressed body.
The second future, which Haraway offers as an alternative in her critique of binary thinking, allows for kinship between boundaries and acceptance of fluid and contradictory identities.
[1] Haraway takes issue with some traditional feminists, reflected in statements describing how "women more than men somehow sustain daily life, and so have a privileged epistemological (relating to the theory of knowledge) position potentially."
'"[1] To counteract the essentializing and anachronistic rhetoric of spiritual ecofeminists, who were fighting patriarchy with modernist constructions of female-as-nature and earth mothers, Haraway employs the cyborg to refigure feminism into cybernetic code.
[4] In 2006, a variorum edition of the Manifesto was published in The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments[5] integrating variations from the various versions and returning references and some of the scholarly apparatus that had become separated from the text.
Patchwork Girl's "thematic focus on the connections between monstrosity, subjectivity, and new reproductive technologies is apparent from its very first page, when readers, or users, open the hypertext to find a picture of a scarred and naked female body sewn together with a single dotted line...Readers enter the text by clicking on this body and following its 'limbs' or links to different sections of the text.
"[7] The Patchwork Girl embraces Haraway's conception of a cybernetic posthuman being in both her physical multiplicity and her challenge towards "the images and fantasies sustaining reproductive politics.
[8] In her essay "Mind Over Matter: Mental Evolution and Physical Devolution in The Incredible Shrinking Man", American critical scholar Ruthellen Cunnally uses Haraway's cyborg to help make sense of how Robert Scott Carey, the protagonist of The Incredible Shrinking Man, transforms into a cyborg in the midst of a metaphor of cold war politics in his home.
[9] When Robert finds himself lost in the feminine space of the basement, an area of the house that was reserved for Louise's domestic duties of sewing and washing, he is forced to fight for his life and reclaim his masculinity.
[10] The essay has been described as "controversial" and "viral" in its circulation through multiple academic departments and disciplinary boundaries, contributing to the critical discourse on its claims.
"[12] The rapid adoption of the article in academic circles also increased the pace of the critical conversation surrounding the work, and in 1990, Haraway felt that the essay had "acquired a surprise half life," which made it "impossible to rewrite" and necessitated revisiting the topic in her subsequent publications.
"[14][15] This is corroborated by Helen Merrick and Margret Grebowicz's observation that scientists who reviewed Primate Visions had similar issues, particularly as related to Haraway's use of irony.
"[20] Beyond its presence in academic context, "A Cyborg Manifesto" has also had popular traction including Wired's piece by Hari Kunzru[21] and Mute,[22] BuzzFeed, [23] as well as Vice.
[26] Scholar Marilyn Maness Mehaffy writes that the "sonographic fetus is in many ways the ultimate cyborg in that it is 'created' in a space of virtuality that straddles the conventional boundary between an organic body and a digital text.
We know that fetal images are depictions, yet the sonogram invokes a documentary-like access to fetuses that makes it easy to ignore this, which in turn can limit the authority and agency of pregnant women.
"[7] In positioning the fetus as independent, and consequently oppositional, to the pregnant mother, these reproductive technologies "reinscribe stable meanings to the human/machine dualism they supposedly disrupt.
