Haraway Response

Donna Haraway’s chapter “A Cyborg Manifesto” is an extremely dense and complicated read. I am going to try and maneuver through her chapter as best as I can, and hopefully I am interpreting her work correctly.

As Joe and Aden point out, there are similarities between Haraway and McLuhan in terms of human and technology relationships. Haraway states we are cyborgs, both machines and organisms (292). I can understand what Haraway is stating here, that with technology we have formed a bond and it is hard to tell where one begins and the other ends. I feel, however, that everything she says the cyborg is (i.e. post-gender, utopian, etc.) does not describe us.

This relationship between humans and machine comes up again when she states, “Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert” (294). While machines are becoming more like us, we are becoming more like them. Do both have to happen simultaneously? Can we have the former without the latter? If not, is it really worth it? I feel these questions we are still trying to answer. As Hathaway explains, being a cyborg is full of “dangerous possibilities” (295), and we have to decide if it is worth the risk.

In class tomorrow I am interested in exploring the human and machine relationship again, but I am also interested in hearing everyone’s take on the gender discussion “Fractured Identities” AND the “informatics of domination” list on pages 300-301. Like I said, this is a very dense read and I feel we could spend a few classes discussing it.

Lastly, I personally liked how Haraway ended her chapter, especially the last paragraph, so I am going to end my blog quoting the last sentence of the chapter, “Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess” (316).