I think embracing Haraway’s cyborg idea makes sense on many levels, few of which I actually understand… I do see the initial and even continuing separation of women from technology; and think assuming the rights to deal in/with technology as beneficial. I like the points she makes about identity politics: “There is nothing about being ‘female’ that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as ‘being’ female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices.” I’m all about blurring some boundaries, which Haraway seems to be a fan of as well.
She discusses women as “integrated circuit to name the situation of women in a world so intimately restructured through the social relations of science and technology. She views women’s place in this circuit in terms of the home, market, paid work place, state, school, clinic-hospital, and church. Haraway sees the cyborg world as “great riches for feminists explicitly embracing the possibilities inherent in the breakdown of clean distinctions between organism and machine and similar distinctions between the Western self. It is the simultaneity of breakdowns that cracks the matrices of domination and opens geometric possibilities.” Good, yes?
The Manifesto ends with a discussion of how cyborg imagery can express two crucial arguments:
- “The production of the universal, totalizing theory is a major mistake that misses most of reality, probably always, but certainly now.
- Taking responsibility for the social relations of science and technology, means refusing an anti-science metaphysics, a demonology of technology, and so means embracing the skilful task of reconstructing the boundaries of daily life, in partial connection with others, in communication with all of our parts.”
Yeah, so… something fun. Watch the video for Haraway’s appearance in this cyborg anime film.
And an interesting interpretation of Cyborg Manifesto…A Trip to the Zoo
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April 20, 2010 at 12:14 am
Mary
That first clip is pretty funny. But yeah, I was thinking about that sort of thing in class, I think. The bit about why we create these androids to look like us, idealized versions of us, things we know. (I remember, we were talking about sexualized female robots in film and I was thinking “hyper-sexualized,” but it wasn’t really an idea so I didn’t mention it). Anyway, I think we create this sort of android because we lack imagination and because we’re trying to be god. Isn’t that one of those eternal struggles? Or maybe that’s a male thing. Because if you think about it, the idea that we did not create ourselves, really, some fluffy, amorphous idea made us, it’s a little emasculating. And if we can replicate the process maybe we can get back some of that power. Kill god and all that. That was kind of a tangent, wasn’t it.
That second video was weird. And a little creepy somehow. You know, you can embed vimeo clips. Because I crave symmetry, or something, I just wanted to let you know. Here’s the code if you want it.
[vimeo 1091069]
April 20, 2010 at 12:15 am
Mary
The code includes the brackets, I didn’t just put them there like Walsh’s . They’re part of the code.
April 20, 2010 at 5:40 pm
White Cat of Impending Doom
[...] in the Geminoid line, the first resembling Ishiguro himself. This leads me back to a question Lacy’s latest post brought up, why are people creating androids that look identical to them? Is it just because [...]
April 20, 2010 at 5:42 pm
I am the robot. The robot’s not me « White Cat of Impending Doom
[...] in the Geminoid line, the first resembling Ishiguro himself. This leads me back to a question Lacy’s latest post brought up, why are people creating androids that look identical to them? Is it just because [...]