Critical Annotated Webliography on Haraway's 'Cyborg Manifesto'

Guiding Question:
In Haraway’s ‘Cyborg Manifesto’, she strategically assigns her cyborg a female gender. In what ways is gender significant in the representation of cyborgs in popular culture and technoscience?

Introduction

In researching on the guiding question one, at the beginning, I used the Google Scholar search engines searching for “Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, gender significant in the representation of cyborgs in popular culture”. This search produced hundred of results, but many of them are books or some resources that I cannot directly link them. Thus, there are not useful for my webliography. Therefore, I switch to used Google search engine. After perusing the first ten pages of the results, I was able to locate seven articles that I believed would be closely related and useful to answering the guiding question. These articles are as follow:

Donna Haraway first published the essay “A Cyborg Manifesto”[1] in 1985. At that time, the manifesto was promptly causing controversy. The manifesto is characterized by Haraway as the femaleness of the cyborg. The cyborg in Haraway’s manifesto has always been discussed in the context of techo-science and popular culture. I will first examine a variety of interpretations on Haraway’s ‘Cyborg Manifesto’. And I will then examine the way in which gender is significant in the representaion of cyborgs in media text.

Theresa M. Senft’s article[2] offers a useful introduction to Haraway’s ‘Cyborg Manifesto’. She demonstrates her interpretations of Haraway’s text. The article was well organized and comprehensive. It is a helpful starting point to understand the manifesto. Susanna Paasonen’s article[3], on the hand, explores how the manifesto has been read and defined by other scholars. She point out that the cyborg in Haraway’s manifesto was a theoretical figure, a rhetorical strategy and a political method for reconsidering hierarchical binary thinking and binary divisions, i.e. the boundaries between male and female, organic and inorganic, natural and artificial. She continues, the cyborg is breaking boundaries of gender, race or sexuality. In this sense, it becomes an alternative figuration for us to think and speak about the relationship between women and technology, and the possibilities for change and multiplicity. Susanna explains that the manifesto call for women’s active participation in techno-scientific research, feminist appropriation and incorporation of the technology. In short, it strategically functions in rethinking feminist agency.

Hari Kunzru’s article[4] on Donnaway’s ideas proved to be a very useful. Kunzru further explain Susanna’s interpretation that the purpose of the manifesto is to encourage us to rethink about what is natural today and possibility to change. Kunzru illustrated his point with example. Women were told that they were “naturally” weak, emotional, dependent, submissive, and so on, whereas male is strong, aggressive, independent, and so on. Thus they should stay at home and take care of children. If they think that these things are natural and it is what they should do. Their situation will never change. But, if these things are not natural but constructed, like they cyborg, both men and female can be reconstructed with the right tools. In addition, he suggests that modems are the center of cyborg politics. It is because cyborg not just about the freedom construction of yourself, it is about the network too. Meanwhile, Kunzru argued that we are all cyborg. He details the evolution of cyborg to clarify his thesis. In the initial stage, cyborg can be transcending human’s bodily limitations. The typical example of cyborg is Superman. Then we have robots, automata and artificial people from the western culture. Kunzru points out the difference between automata and today’s cyborg is “information”. In 90s, cyborg is accomplished creature and more domestic than 50’s ancestor. Retinal implants, cochlear implants, cosmetic surgery, and so forth. All of them are technology or machine work on our body. Make it simple, people who wear glasses can be considered is a cyborg, because people make use of glasses to help them seeing. Thus, I highly agree with Kunzru that we are cyborg.

Theodora-Eliza Vacarescu[5], on the one hand, argued that Frankenstein’s Monster initially is a cyborg, and, consequently, Donna Haraway’s cyborg is the modern version of Frankenstein’s monster. According to Haraway, the cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world; it is neither female, nor male, or both. Frankenstein’s monster is obviously a man. Can we consider it is a woman? It is transgressed of gender boundary. Vacarescu claim that gender uncertainty of the monster makes him a monster. In this sense, Vacarescu use Frankenstein as a metaphor to challenge Haraway’s ideas that the cyborg was crossing the boundary between male and female. She argues Haraway’s idea confused the gender boundaries and definitions.

In Rochelle Rodrigo’s article[6], she mentions that Haraway, on the other hand, emphasizes that the cyborg difference from Frankenstein’s monster. Rodrigo indicated that The Terminator (1984) was released when Haraway just published the “Cyborg Manifesto”. Some of the most notable bad images of cyborgs also include Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Star Wars (1976), Blade Runner (1982) and Videodrome (1982). Haraway's choose to use some texts, such as Blade Runner, Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang (1969), Joanna Russ's The Female Man (1975) and Vonda McIntyre's Superluminal (1983) which have a good image to demonstrate her ideas on the manifesto. Haraway’s good cyborg image is an amusing contrast to bad cyborg image.

In popular culture and many science fiction films, female cyborgs are always depticted as objects of pornography, iron maiden, innocence and being control, on the contrary, male cyborg is smart, intelligent and rebel. Ulrich Scheck’s article[7] examines gender relations in science fiction film and television from 1980 to present in popular culture in general. Scheck notes that female characters took the peripheral and unimportant roles in the science fiction universe in 60’s to early 70’s. However, representation of women has change start from the first movie of the Alien (1979) to the Star Trek Enterprise series (2001). Women, in this decade, have been depicted as scientists, explorers, mission leaders, and starship captains. Representations of women become more equal even surpassing men in traditional male-dominated roles. Scheck claim that gender roles become more fluid and less restrict to the binary concepts, like what Haraway has suggested. Moreover, the relationship between male and female should take some turns. Indeed, the representation of women has seemingly changed. However, I doubt that women can be surpassing men-dominated roles in science fiction universe. Moreover, the portrayal of cyborg characters reinforces gender binary. For instance, the Borg Queen in the Star Trek seems strong and powerful, but eventually, she loses to Data and the caption.

Conclusion

Donna Haraway's boardly referenced and dicussed "Cyborg Manifesto" has inspired researchers to rethink the hierarchical binary thinking and binary divisions, the boundaries between organic and inorganic, natural and artificial, and in particular, male and female. In addition, it encourage us to rethink the relationship between women and technologies. The ways in which how women are represent in film and popular culture, are seemingly change. I argue that the portrayal of cyborg characters in popular culture, to certain extent, still reinforces gender binary. Female characters still took the peripheral and unimportant roles in the science fiction universe. For instance, the female characters depicted in Matrix.

References:

[1] Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html, accessed 20 Mar 2007.
[2] Senft, Theresa M. "Reading Notes on Donna Haraway's 'Cyborg Manifesto.'", 21 Oct 2001, http://www.echonyc.com/~janedoe/writing/manifesto.html, accessed 20 Mar 2007

[3] Susanna, Paasonen. “Cyborg & Cyclops: the vision of a man-machine” http://www.translocal.net/susanna/cyborg_cyclops.pdf accessed 20 Mar 2007

[4] Hari Kunzru. ‘You are cyborg’, Wired Magazine, 5.02, (February 1997) http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffharaway_pr.html, accessed 20 Mar 2007
[5] Theodora-Eliza, Vacarescu. “From Frankenstein’s Monster to Haraway’s Cyborg” http://www.feminism.ro/book_gender_post/part4/Theo_Vacarescu.pdf, accessed 20 Mar 2007

[6] Rochelle Rodrigo. “Rochelle Rodrigo’s “Cyborging: Rhetoric Beyond
Donna Haraway and the Cyborg Manifesto”, The Journal of Advancing Technology, Volume 2 (Spring 2005) http://www.information-technology-college.com/subPages/insideTheTechnology/subpages/inthefield/subpages/journal/content/spring_2005/UAT_Journal_spring2005.pdf, accessed 20 Mar 2007

[7] Ulrich Scheck. “Where No Woman Has Gone Before: Humour and Gender Crossing in Star Trek’s Voyager and Enterpris” http://www.german.ubc.ca/GLM/bronnbach/WS1_Scheck_Web.pdf, accessed 20 Mar 2007