A Cyborg Manifesto (A Historic Deconstruction?)
“The cyborg is a kind of disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and personal self”
(A cyborg manifesto, Donna Haraway, 2007, p 44)
“Ambivalence towards the disrupted unities mediated by high-tech culture requires not sorting consciousness into categories of ‘clear-sighted critique grounding a solid political epistemology’ versus ‘manipulated false consciousness, but subtle understanding of emerging pleasures, experiences, and powers with serious potential for changing the rules of the game”
(A cyborg manifesto, Donna Haraway, 2007, p 51)
“This is a dream not of a feminist speaking in tongues, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia. It is an imagination of a feminist speaking in tongues to strike fear into the circuits of the supersavers of the new right. It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories. Though both are bounded in the spiral dance, I would rather be a a cyborg than a goddess.”
(A cyborg manifesto, Donna Haraway, 2007, p 57)
I read ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ last semester; This semester, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ reads like a history of modernism, a historic deconstruction of a social, political and technological journey through the 20th Century.
I would never have thought that I would have been thrown back to one of my favorite writers, Virginia Wolf, in #ededc. I’m taking it that ‘Night and Day’ is cited in ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ being an encounter of social consequence at the beginning (?) of the 20th C, an encounter with ‘suffrage’ and ‘aristocratic’ deconstruction between the wars, to the experimental modernist novel ‘Waves’ a soliloquy, a deconstruction of time, mind and relationship. The more I think about ‘Wolf’ the more I begin to understand her genius in respect of her remarkable vision, a chaotic understanding and insight of her (and our) future, reflected by Haraway as “instrumental control disappears and all heterogeneity can be submitted to disassembly, reassembly, investment and exchange”; suffrage (social-feminism?) being a key and central theme of ‘Cyborg’, an “emerging bases for new kinds of unity across race, gender and class” (Haraway, 2007), leading to our current “disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and personal self” a “powerful infidel heteroglossia” (Haraway, 2007).
Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) has become almost nostalgic. The concept of the replicant (or Cyborg) lamenting the loss of existence, this for me begins to sum up the notion of ‘Cyborg’. We are all Cyborg now! Asking the question, what level of sophistication will the blurring of technological boundaries facilitate the coming Cognosphere.
“one should expect control of strategies to concentrate on boundaries conditions and interfaces, on rates of flow across boundaries – and not on the integrity of natural objects. ‘Integrity’ or ‘sincerity’ of the Westren self gives way to decision procedures and expert systems” (Haraway, 2007, p 44)
(Marx has more in common with openness than ‘Cyborg’, beyond late Capitalism. social control of information, Neo-Marxism)
These are thoughtful comments. What is challenging, I think, is how we can perceive a ‘boundary’ without reflective insight? How can we recognise ‘construction’ and ‘deconstruction’ unless we can remove ourselves? Can we?
The use of a smartphone, or a blog, a YouTube upload, or GPS mapping allows us to extend our presence, embodiment. But there is a volatility associated with this presence, a cyborg like state – human/machine, physical/non-physical – through (digital) sound, images, words and interactions, a consciousness (constructed and deconstructed) that can be switched on and off by a machine (computer), indeed this comment itself is an example. Switch off my blog (Blade Runner) and do you switch off me?
Interesting thinking Gina! My use of ‘deconstruction’ in this instance is really related to historical context. I see ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ as what could be described as a ‘history’ that maps the journey of Modernism to it’s conclusion – posthuman sort of denotes the end of modernism, with cyborg heavy in nostalgia.
Your argument regards ‘boundary’ interests me. I think ‘Boundary’ is very important with relation to information and virtuality (Hayles, 1999). ‘Virtuality’ is key here, virtuality is the link between between information and existence. If you think of information as being like dark matter or gravity, its just there… Virtuality (tried to find a citation I found in Halyes which descibes this) describes Boundary. Here’s where Posthuman appears, Posthuman depends on your degree of Virtuality, Hayles has measure to determine this (unless I dreamt it).
The posthuman can’t be turned off, because information can’t be turned off – asking the question, what is the difference between the existent you and your Blog? You are information, and your virtuality is your relationship with information. The interesting point here is, what you describe as a ‘Boundary’ – Boundary is a metaphorical interpretation of information, this could be you, your body is a Boundary, your blog is Boundary, a thought is a Boundary, a division of information, a frequency.
So, the argument must be, analogue interpretation of information – until we can communicate with pure (for want of a better word) information. How do we deal with Cognosphere?
This is interesting Phil, and makes me wonder what you would do if you were bringing Urry and Sheller’s work (referenced in an earlier post) up against the notion of boundary in Haraway’s text? What kind of ‘mobilities’ across and within the category of the cyborg would work, do you think, in re-thinking the cyborg in terms of the posthuman? Don’t feel obliged to answer, I’m just thinking aloud here, but I did enjoy this post and particularly your thinking on Modernity as expressed in Wolf. btw you might like that one of the most prominent thinkers in posthumanism is also a Wolfe http://www.carywolfe.com/ : )
This link might work for the Sheller and Urry paper http://www.envplan.com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/abstract.cgi?id=a37268
I’ve began to reflect (unknowingly) a lot of Urry and Sheller’s ‘new mobile paradigm’ in past work and posts. New mobile paradigm (incredibly) echos a lot of Berger (shape of pocket), almost identical in sections. I can see myself going onto use Urry and Sheller’s possible research directions, although I’m more interested in how design can influence interactions and sorting systems… Love the ‘entry and exit’ terminology, that’s just waiting for sign posts! I understand the multiple presence argument “many individuals increasingly exist beyond their private bodies” (Urry and Sheller) which I take as a Posthuman atribute (?) and a need to understand that influence (think this could be achieved in image, but where/how do I find the data?) – but I fail to understand Haraway’s text in this case – Cyborg, as I mentioned feels like a child of Modernism (?) I almost feel nostalgic for that concept and see virtuality as the (obvious) key to Posthuman. Posthuman depending on your degree of Virtuality, Virtuality as an invention of the (lost) body of information – kind of analogue interpretation of information, sort of going home?
Wolf along with Dylan Thomas (oddly enough) have been with me since my early 20′s – Waves and Under Milk Wood, (I think) have in part shaped the way I think – like Urry and Sheller’s ‘sorting systems’ creativity is in the re-ordering of a sequential ordering of thought “production of compound tools” (Hayles). I can imagine Wolf desperately trying to reorder her world ‘Waves’ in an attempt to stave off (so called) insanity! And Thomas getting blind drunk because the ‘ordered’ analogue world he exists in, is simply not enough…
Can’t help feeling our (human) analogue interpretation (of our world) is at odds with just about everything…
thanks for the great reference to the Sheller and Urry paper.
I am particularly interested in the new mobile paradigm and aesthetics, the notion of spaces and places, the interconnected material and immaterial. Your feeling on ‘how our human analogue interpretation of our world is at odds with just about everything’ is actually one of my key considerations: how do we deal with online aesthetics experiences ? do we use our analogue skilled interpretations, or do we use posthuman (?) skills? I am looking forward to unraveling some of this.