374

Donna Harroway is a feminist philosopher, who wrote "A Cyborg Manifesto", an essay which uses the metaphor of a cyborg to critique traditional feminist "identity politics". She asks us to imagine a cyborg, neither machine more human, genderless, raceless, and without parents. Completely unrooted in historical social groups and tradition, the cyborg society is able to transcend our common politics of groups advocating for the goals of members which belong to any given identity. The Cyborg has no concrete identity.

So, rather than feminism advocating on behalf of "women", which is a set containing a group of individuals with that identity, it is a loose coalition of people with a certain affinity, since in reality people are never one single identity, particularly as we ourselves become more like cyborgs with technology and virtual lives increasingly become more of our identities. Like the cyborg, no human being is merely one thing such as a "woman", a "worker", or a "black person". We are an amalgamation of multiple things, many of which are socially constructed or even freely chosen by our creative will, and she thought a politics of the future must reflect our "cyborg" nature.

You can find more on the Cyborg Manifesto here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe7U-ANhSOE

Donna Harroway is a feminist philosopher, who wrote "A Cyborg Manifesto", an essay which uses the metaphor of a cyborg to critique traditional feminist "identity politics". She asks us to imagine a cyborg, neither machine more human, genderless, raceless, and without parents. Completely unrooted in historical social groups and tradition, the cyborg society is able to transcend our common politics of groups advocating for the goals of members which belong to any given identity. The Cyborg has no concrete identity.

So, rather than feminism advocating on behalf of "women", which is a set containing a group of individuals with that identity, it is a loose coalition of people with a certain affinity, since in reality people are never one single identity, particularly as we ourselves become more like cyborgs with technology and virtual lives increasingly become more of our identities. Like the cyborg, no human being is merely one thing such as a "woman", a "worker", or a "black person". We are an amalgamation of multiple things, many of which are socially constructed or even freely chosen by our creative will, and she thought a politics of the future must reflect our "cyborg" nature.

You can find more on the Cyborg Manifesto here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe7U-ANhSOE