Summary: Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto”
Editor’s Note: For this assignment, I needed to read and summarize the published piece or content listed below, and then provide a response or assessment of the writing.
Summary
Haraway presents the concept of the cyborg, which represents a hybrid of three boundary breakdowns: human and animal (brought about by evolution and changing human attitudes about the relationship between humans and animals), human and machine (brought about by the advancement of machine technology in the late twentieth century), and physical and non-physical (brought about by microelectronic devices and the political invisibility of cyborgs). She argues against industrial capitalism and the Western culture of dualism/binary opposites that define groups of people based on race, class, or gender. Haraway criticizes feminism as having fallen into traditional dualities and essentialisms that should be rejected for her cyborg concept, which calls for a coding of the world with boundaries that can be permeated with information through communication. She discusses women of color and the struggles they endure due to the world defining them, rather being allowed to define themselves. Haraway states that cyborgs communicate through writing that isn’t defined as the one single code that interprets all communication. Cyborgs are women who do not have essentialist views, but rather, fluid and evolving views that do not allow them to be victims. Cyborg views also allow traditional dualism views to be reconsidered and reconstructed so identity, categories, and relationships are unable to be totally defined in theory.
Response
It took me awhile to figure out how Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” related to ecocriticism. It was difficult to read and process, and when I was finished, I thought it was more an assault on feminism than anything else. I think it was mainly because there was a focus on feminism toward the end, and her text was taxing. I could appreciate some of her humor, but overall, I did not love her writing. After reviewing the early portions of the essay, I figured out that the boundary breakdown between human and animal must represent the relationship between humans and the environment. Her claim that “animal rights are not irrational denials of human uniqueness” and “The cyborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary between human and animal is transgress” made far more sense when I thought of the animal as all things environmental, rather than the literal animal.
I thought her commentary on cyborgs insisting on “noise and pollution” was an interesting way to say that she wants the difficult conversations to happen (that’s how I interpreted that statement—I could be wrong). The idea of “perfect communication” isn’t something that cyborgs conform to or seek, but rather, they want to force people to think about their ideologies through writing or other communications that are likely difficult and possibly painful to confront. She wants people to mix topics and ideas that were previously considered separate, and she wants people to do so through writing or communication. It’s a simple statement that flies in the face of years of cultural habits and ideologies and forces people to see beyond the essentialism of their identity and ideologies. I understand what she’s saying (I think), but I don’t know that the way she chose to say it garnered the greatest possible effect for people outside of her academic circle.
Overall, I thought her essay was an extremely elaborate approach to characterizing a way of thinking that not only goes beyond duality and essentialism, but also erases it entirely with the goal of constructing a new and fluid existence for all living beings. The cyborg denies the idea of essentialism and dualism, thereby erasing boundaries previously constructed by the male capitalist. It seems that she created her own duality of cyborg/capitalist in making that assertion, but I think I understand her point that it’s important to see beyond the limitations that have been constructed, largely by capitalist societies, and are continuing to define people—especially when those constructions are demeaning or destructive to people or the environment. I just think she could have gotten her point across in a much clearer fashion and appealed to the mass population—and likely had more of a following or instigated more of a change outside of the academic world—if she had chosen to write her essay in a way that was more easily understood. It makes me wonder if she tried to write in amore straightforward manner in previously-written essays, and those essays didn’t evoke the reception she hoped to achieve, so she took this route? Maybe she read other essays from other critics and scholars and thought their writing fell short? I don’t know the answer, but I’d like to ask her where and how the inspiration for the cyborg concept arose, and why she thought this would be a successful route to take to achieve her critical goals.