ENGL 385: Class Notes, NMR

ENGL 385: Class Notes, NMR.
Donna Haraway, A Manifesto for Cyborgs General Notes Yes, this is a tricky read. In part, thats because its written for other academics, in a time when theory speak was very much in vogue. But also, because it references a lot of complex ideas that Haraway assumes we already know: in particular, Marxist philosophy and psychoanalytic theory (which well get onto in a second). In some ways this article is a culmination of other readings we've done: o E.g. McLuhan talking about the way we're built into networks of media o E.g. Norbert Wiener talking about how we can use cybernetics as a way of thinking about what we are and do, and the idea of cybernetics as "command and control" A note. Haraway saying she's a "socialist feminism" doesn't mean she wants to turn us into a state where the government will come and take your guns away and death-panel your grandma. Socialist feminism is a theoretical school that uses the conceptual framework of socialism (i.e. the primary importance of material conditions to our lives) as a way to critique culture. Socialist feminism differs from Marxist feminism in that it says the social and cultural are also part of the equation. Part of this socialist feminism angle is to critique another theoretical school, that of psychoanalysis (this is why she talks about the "pre-Oedipal"). The fundamental precept of psychoanalysis is that were always trying to get back to some state of purity and wholeness, and so our desires are never fulfilled. This theory states that we're fundamentally broken; we can never be truly happy, because desire drives us to always want more. Haraway is arguing that we don't have to spend our lives trying to achieve some imaginary state of complete psychological fulfillment to live meaningful and happy lives. What is technology? On the surface, technology is a tool.. Haraway points to Heidegger's standard extensions idea - the tool extends human reach, for example McLuhan also refers to this formulation when he talks about media in specific as the "extensions of man". Media extends the reach of the human senses (eye, ear) But technology is more than that. Technology changes the way we think about the world. We are embedded in a technological world (Haraway calls this the "integrated circuit") More abstractly, we can think of writing and language as technologies What does cybernetics mean for our lives? It means we live in a world of control and feedback. This could be physical (like a power station), or governmental (think of the way warfare in the US military is driven by technology), or corporate. For Haraway this is both dangerous and potentially very powerful. e.g. dangerous because it could lead to the state or the corporation controlling our lives, but powerful because we could create tools ourselves (think of grassroots organization in the internet) What's with the feminism angle? This was written in the 80s. It may be difficult to grasp, but the status of women was still pretty marginal. They'd gotten out of the kitchen, burned their bras etc, but it was still an extremely difficult battle to get equal pay for equal work, and women had to work very hard to be taken seriously, especially in finance, management and technical fields. Haraway is particularly interested in the question of what technology does/doesn't do for women. Traditionally, we've seen a world where women and men are imagined according to
technology versus nature, e.g. o woman = nature, man = culture o woman = body, man = mind o woman = acted upon, man = acting Haraway calls this the "maze of dualisms". So, women are meant to be the opposite of technology. They're concerned with bodily things - fashion, childbirth, food, nurturing etc. Haraway, like many other feminists of this period, has the mission to undermine this series of oppositions by showing how women don't (or shouldn't) fit into these categories She's chosen technology as her "battleground" for this fight Other feminists have used Haraways theories to do foundational studies. Susan Squier, for example, wrote a book in the 90s called Babies in Bottles, which dealt with the way we technologize conception and childbirth.
What are cyborgs? Let's start with the easy one. Technically, cyborgs are hybrids of technology and human in science fiction, a cyborg is: - robocop, the ship who sang. More frightening: star trek's Borg (you will be assimilated). Many people working in cyberstudies also expand their view to include non-human but human-like entities: eg the Terminator, the female robot in Metropolis, the cylons from BSG. But these are just fictional metaphors for a more general trend. Haraway suggests we're ALL cyborgs. We can think of this at several levels: o Modern everyday life: we wear glasses, have implants, hip replacements, pacemakers. o We're intimately involved with machines in our everyday life, esp. computers and cell phones o More abstractly, we are a kind of cybernetic organism in that our bodies undergo homeostasis. o Most abstractly, we use language, which many theorists think is a kind of technology we've developed over millennia. (William Burroughs, the father of the cut-up, famously said "language is a virus from outer space). why is the cyborg useful for Haraway? First, it messes with our ideas about the role of women. if a cyborg can exist, then maybe women and technology are not mutually exclusive; women can use the power of technology too. Second, it messes up our ideas of purity. A cyborg doesn't deal in dualisms, i.e. it doesn't live in a black/white good/bad nature/culture world. So, it's more flexible. This is a tricky concept, so let's look at a concrete example. Think about the arguments surrounding global warming. o One side will say that the only way to solve it is to stop using all forms of energy technology (the back-to-the-land approach). o Another side might say that we can fix the problem using technology (the technocrat approach). A hybrid approach (and one in line with socialist feminism in some ways, although Haraway might disagree) might say that it's all about economics and the only way we'll fix it is to provide incentives to do both things: use less power, and create more green technologies. This is kind of a socialist idea (in the sense that it identifies economics as the driving force) but it uses capitalism (eg tax cuts or cap & trade) to achieve its goals. - So it's a kind of cyborg approach that uses both nature and culture to achieve its goals.

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