Recent Debates on Cyborg-Image and Donna Haraway

Jugabrat Choudhury
Department of English
Bajali College

Introduction:-

Feminism is a category which is deeply embedded in the culture and the society.
Culture is a phenomenon which is shaped by the technological developments of the
age and the debates of the periods. In the recent feminine theoretical debates,
scientific discourses have taken precedent over earlier concepts like the issue of
subjectivities, self agency and female representations. These recent developments in
feminist debates destabilize the post-modernist concept of self as fluid category
without stability and come out with a new concept of cyborg-imge. Within the world
of cyborg debates, Donna Haraway is considered as a prominent figure who has given
a futuristic-vision of self within the cyborg world to go beyond any kind of binary
oppositions. This paper is an attempt to trace the various debates on the concept of
cyborg-image, its scientific discourse as taken by Haraway, contrasting with other
notable cyborg critics and its ethics of representation. It also tries to explore the
position taken by Donna Haraway in authenticating the cyborg-image in her A
Manifesto For Cyborg: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in The 1980s
written in 1994.
Main argument and Analysis:-

Although Haraway is considered as a prominent figure in recent cyborg debates but

cyborg critics, like Shawn P Wilbur, Arturo Escobar and Forest Pyle, do play an
important role in developing the debate of cyborg into cyborg-feminism.
In the manifesto, Haraway tries to construct a possible stable identity to the postmodernist fragmented self in the form of cyborg-image which would transcend the
physical and ethical boundaries of gender categorisation. According to her the
combination of human compatibility with machines and technologies signify a
compatible transformation of humans which is a kind of formulation of a hybrid
generation. This formulation would go beyond hegemonic dominance, gender
categorisation, racial discrimination, and outmoded representation of female self. But
cyboric critics like Shawn P Wilbur does accord with Donna Haraways vision of
utopia and provides different perspectives on cyborg debate.

In his Archeology of Cyborg: Virtuality, Community, Indentity, he brings out the

complexity of the myth of cyborg and points out its multiple functions. He say that
this myth which is embodied in technological advancement, has the capacity to blur
the distinction between fact and fantasy(SW, Archeology of Cyborg: Virtuality,
Community, Indentity, p48), by constructing a kind of a virtual community(SW,
Archeology of Cyborg: Virtuality, Community, Indentity, p48). But this kind of
construction entirely rests on a kind of illusive identification play where the perceiver
identifies with a kind of Lacanian Mirror-Image. This myth does not conform to the
reality but presents an illusive picture of the society which is ephemeral in nature. In
this society simulation play a major role in creating a picturesque world where signs
are the organizing principle of the new social order. This identification process leads
towards a kind of metaphysical realm, a kind of dream-world, which distorts the

realistic concept and does not affiliate with day to day life. The identification actually
does not conform to the reality principles of life as he says, the discourse of cyberspace suggests the possibility of stepping beyond and remaining ones self in some
lasting way through virtual-identity play(SW, Archeology of Cyborg: Virtuality,
Community, Indentity, p48). I think he ignores the most important aspect which is the
differentiation between biological reality and artificial reality. For him this
problematic aspect of virtual or pseudo reality is not compatible with the reality
principle as it does not accord with the reality theory.
On the other hand Donna Haraways concept of utopia is not based on some kind of
pseudo or virtual reality but conforms to the contemporary situations. Unlike Wilburs
Virtual Community which erases any kind of reality principle from this new
formulation and creation of Lacanian Mirror-image stage which severs the self from
its essence when the subjects starts to identify with the desired object. Haraway sees
this new world as a utopia, an alternative solution to transcend and create a unified
world without any threat of social or racial discrimination. An odyssey away from
male dominated, racially discriminated world to a utopia based on French
Revolutions principle of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. In this utopian vision, she
also includes the concepts of fractured and fragmented identities of woman of color
as Chela Sandoval terms them. She includes the oppositional consciousness of
Afro-American feminists. These black feminists have identified themselves with
American culture which is not a natural one but rather a process of gaining identity
through identification process. As Haraway writes, the politics of race and culture in
the U.S. womans movements are intimately interwove(DH, A Manifesto For
Cyborg: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in The 1980s p93), and their

representation as culturally other is itself based on biased notion and relatively

depends on whites articulation of self.
The cyborg-image removes all kinds of racial or national differences, as it is not
founded on differences but on the sameness of sex, as Haraway forcefully puts,
gender, race and class consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible
historical experiences of the contradictory realities of patriarchy, colonialism, racism
and capitalism( DH, A Manifesto For Cyborg: Science, Technology, and Socialist
Feminism in The 1980s p91).

Unlike Shawn P Wilbur, who does not differentiate between biological realities and
computer realities, another cyborg critic Arthuro Escobar in his Welcome to Cyberia:
Notes on the Anthropology of Cyberculture, differentiates between biological reality
and artificial or computer reality and sees this entire debate within the framework of
cultural production. For him, the dominance of late capitalism and advancement in
technology has created a media based culture which entirely depends on machines. It
seems that this encroachment of media based economy has usurped the human
culture, leading towards a kind of humanoid world. This dominance of machines has
created a possibility of a culture based on machines which would gradually erase the
natural or human culture. He says a broad process of socio-cultural construction set
into motion in the wake of the new technologies, biotechnologies are giving rise to
bio-sociality, a new order for the production of life, nature and the body, through
biologically-based technological interventions(AE, his Welcome to Cyberia: Notes
on the Anthropology of Cyberculture,p57). For him the study of cyber-culture is
particularly concerned with the cultural construction on which the new technologies
are based.

For him, these virtual realities are socially produced and entirely rest on utilitarian
view of technology and the incorporation of machines into human life has erased the
binaries between humans and machines and created a possibility of a world of
simulations or images. Apart from this contrary formulation he does offers a positive
aspect of this combination. For him the cyborg world exists independently away from
epistemological world of knowledge.

This

would

help

to

transcend

the

epistemologically out-modeled representation of gender category.

This could be further elaborated with the help of Foucaults concept of power and
knowledge in which he asserts that the knowledge is constructed through power
which dominates the entire society. Power constructs the realities and sees, perceives,
interprets and measures the world from its particular perspectives. To break away
from any kind of external epistemological imposition one has to refuse what we
are(qtd Foucault), as he uses in delinquents case, to radically refuse to be identified
with the constructed image and to break away from any kind of stereo-typical gender
categorization. Whereas Haraways manifesto refuses the traditional outmoded
discourse based on gender discrimination and ventures beyond the epistemological
world to create a unique self identity, generating new epistemologies and which
would be beyond the periphery of power or knowledge. Cyborg functions
ideologically to dislocate epistemological definitions of the organic and machine. This
manifesto calls for cyborg-heteroglossia, as Barbara Kennedy says, which breaks
down the categorizing epistemological assumption or powers.
To further authenticate her stance in detaching herself from traditional approach
Haraway talks about the contemporary science fictions which are full of cyborgs.
The exposure to technological advancement provides an opportunity for Haraway to

venture beyond socio-political category. For her the cyborg image is a signifier which
signifies a new possible social feminist collective subjectivity. She represents this
cyborg image as a embodied subjectivity(Prins.360). It represents a possible subject
formation that destabilizes established boundaries: between organism and machine,
between human and animal, between physical and the non-physical. She says, The
cyborg is a creature in a post-ender world(DH, A Manifesto For Cyborg: Science,
Technology, and Socialist Feminism in The 1980s p84) which does not conform to the
natural principles of the world, of original unity of human beings which Freud and
Marx tried to achieve through their writings.

Another cyborg critic Forest Pyle in Making Cyborgs, Making Human, talks about
the role of humans in propagating these radical cyboric ideology through
representations. In his analysis of the two English movies The Terminator and Blade
Runners, he talks about the destructive nature of humans in destroying natural and
biological system by creating humanoids like The Terminator movies protagonist. He
says we make and, on occasions, unmake our conceptions of ourselves(FP, Making
Cyborgs, Making Human p125), which has jeopardized the natural process of
evolution and encouraged the generation to venture beyond natural boundaries. He
seems to invoke John Calvins controversial theory of Pre-destination and Free Will,
where on one hand humans are free to exercise their free will through their subjective
exercise of will but still they are predestined. Pyle says that the modern generation has
incorporated itself with the machines and not vice-versa. This exercise of free-will to
choose has finally culminated in a kind of dependence on machines without which the
life seems incomplete. This incorporation of human into machine has destroyed their
subjective autonomous power by their willful surrender to machines, as he asserts

the status and fate of the human becomes intertwined with the technologically
reproduced images of the cyborg(FP, Making Cyborgs, Making Human p 127).

On the contrary Haraway does not entirely refutes Forest Pyles claim of subjectively
giving away of self autonomous power by incorporating into machines. She says, At
the centre of my ironic faith, my blasphemy is the image of cyborg (DH, A
Manifesto For Cyborg: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in The 1980s
p83). This image of cyborg is itself based on the contradictions. On one hand, it
gradually displaces the physical space of the humans by occupying his place and on
the other hand the half human or humanoid quality will sustain and transcend the
entire problematic compartmentalization of gender question. But it will also create
consensus and oppositional critical consciousness to include culturally other. Under
the cyborg condition the notion of cyborg human agency takes a new turn. It redefines
the cyborg as a fiction of mapping our social and bodily reality(BP, The Ethics of
Hybrid Subjects: Feminist Constructivism According to Donna Haraway p374), as
Chela Sandoval in her New Sciences: Cyborg Feminism and The Methodology of The
Oppressed says. It creates new possibilities of new grounds for theoretical and
political alliances and representations, and affinity through racial differences. This
aspect brings into the context the Third-World Feminist theories which strive to create
an equalitarian atmosphere in racially dominated feminist theories. This cyborg image
has the capacity to destroy master narratives whose representative qualities are deeply
embedded into racism and colonialism, as it is based on equal values and respect for
culturally other. This cyborg world is beyond the socio political identification or
stereo-typical representations and it has no origin. It is completely without any
historical positionality which goes beyond the dichotomy of gender and outside the

historical representation. This cyborg myth has the capability to subvert the traditional
belief of genesis or beginning, leading towards post-feminist universe and it does not
belong to the linear structure and to the original history or beginning or ending.
Banjke Prins in her The Ethics of Hybrid Subjects says, The cyborg is Haraways
figuration of a possible feminist and post humanist subjectivity(BP, The Ethics of
Hybrid Subjects: Feminist Constructivism According to Donna Haraway p360) where
the dissimulation of earlier concepts enables a major rethinking of earlier theoretical
perspectives. The cyborg is self sufficient in nature which does not demand a
heterosexual partner to fulfil a sense of completeness, like Marry Shellys Monster
Frankenstein. It does not crave for any community or familial relationship. It sets the
desire for order, coherence and stability against an awareness of disorder, confusion
and chaos.

To conclude the analysis , after the various arguents and points by the scholars and
Haraway herself, we can infer that Haraways main motive behind her futuristic
vision is clear. She wants a world without oppression and domination, where sexual,
racial and other so-called natural distinctions lose their meaning. Where even species
boundaries particularly between humans and non-humans are no longer sacred. This
radical image of cyborg is her assertion of new formulation of identity which would
be beyond the patriarchal or gender categorization. It erases the ideological and
biological differences and goes beyond the categorisation of male or female. For her
this is the only possible alternative left for feminists to survive in this incessantly
transforming world.

Work Cited

Escobar, Arthuro. Welcome to Cyberia: Notes on the Anthropology of Cyberculture.

The Cyberculture reader. Ed. David Bell and Barbara Kennedy. Routledge,
London. 2000, 56-76.
Haraway, Donna. A Manifesto For Cyborg: Science, Technology, and Socialist
Feminism in The 1980s. The Postmodern Turn: New Perspectives on Social
Theory. Ed. Steven Seidman. Cambridge University Press, London. 1994, 82115.
Kennedy, Barbara. Introduction. Cyber-feminism. The Cyberculture reader. Ed.
David Bell and Barbara Kennedy. Routledge, London. 2000, 283-290.
Prins, Banjke. The Ethics of Hybrid Subjects: Feminist Constructivism According to
Donna Haraway. Science, Technology, and Human Values. Sage Publication.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/690020. 1995, 352-367.
Pyle, Forest. Making Cyborgs, Making Humans: Of Terminator and Blade Runner.
The Cyberculture reader. Ed. David Bell and Barbara Kennedy. Routledge,
London. 2000, 124-137.
Sandoval, Chela. New Sciences: Cyborg Feminism and The Methodology of The
Oppressed. The Cyberculture reader. Ed. David Bell and Barbara Kennedy.
Routledge, London. 2000, 374-390.

Wilbur, P. Shawn. Archeology of Cyborg: Virtuality, Community, Indentity. The

Cyberculture reader. Ed. David Bell and Barbara Kennedy. Routledge,
London. 2000, 45-55.