Donna
Haraway 1944- ?
There
is nothing about being female that naturally binds women. There is not
even
such a state as 'being' female,itself a highly complex category
constructed
in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices"
-Haraway, "Cyborg Manifesto" (155)
Philosophy of Technology/Feminism
Biography:
Interdisciplinary
PhD in Biology and Philosophy
Simians, Cyborgs,
and
Women : The Reinvention of Nature
Influences:
De Beauvoir: -
construction of
what
it means to be woman as Other
-oppositions
between
male/female realms across cultures/discourses
-explores how
"Otherness"
plays out across discursive fields-
-male/female
=androgyny, metrosexual
-human/machine
-human/animal
Foucault-
the
importance
of language in constructing reality and webs of power relations
-the use of
metaphor
to shape our understanding of the logic of a discourse
-looking at
individuals
on the boundaries as the most creative/transgressive
Primary thesis:
A.social
relations
are determined by changes in the structure and form of
economy/science/culture
1.our
understandings of relationships between sex/race/class are based
on organic, 19th century society
2.-classical
liberal individualism
3."state
of nature" of contract theorists
4.
belief
that govt is external, private domain exists
5.
humans
are self-governing by use of reason
B. Obsolete
understandings
that no longer fit reality
1.currently
in information systems-based economy, high technology
2. need
new
metaphors and theories to explain social/power relationships
3. old
oppositions
have broken down and merged
4. the
cyborg
is
her primary metaphor, post-human world
5.
doesn't
make sense to describe humans as only biological units, given impact of
technology
C. humans are
blended
with machines because of technology
1.we have
to
re-think what it means to be human
2. fusion
of
oppositions into new reality
3.
reflection
of advances in science/technology/culture
a. political understandings need to evolve to reflect new realities
b. world is defined by "fusion" not "fission" , merging &
transformation, not conflict
culture/nature
machine/human r
ai
male/female
science/fiction
So,
nature is not a physical place to which one can go, nor a treasure to
fence in or bank, nor as essence to be saved or violated. Nature is not
hidden and so does not need to be unveiled. Nature is not a text to be
read
in the codes of mathematics and biomedicine. It is not the "other" who
offers
origin, replenishment, and service. Neither mother, nurse, nor slave,
nature
is not matrix, resource, or tool for the reproduction of man. Nature
is for me, and I venture for many of us who are planetary fetuses
gestating in the amniotic efffluvia of terminal industrialism,4 one of
those
impossible things characterized by Gayatri Spivak as that which we
cannot
not desire. Excruciatingly conscious of nature's discursive
constitution as
"other" in the histories of colonialism, racism, sexism, and class
domination
of many kinds, we nonetheless find in this problematic, ethno-specific,
long-lived,
and mobile concept something we cannot do without, but can never
"have."
We must find another relationship to nature besides reification and
possession.
4.doesn't
make
sense to think of individual, anymore
5. nodes
of
networks & activities are primary unit of analysis
a.technology, industry, management, politics, etc.
b. explore the "interfaces"
c. bionic, symbiotic relations vs parasitical relations df
I think the answer to this serious
political and analytical question lies
in two related turns: 1) unblinding ourselves from the sun-worshiping
stories
about the history of science and technology as paradigms of
rationalism; and
2) refiguring the actors in the construction of the ethno-specific
categories
of nature and culture. The actors are not all "us." If the world exists
for
us as "nature," this designates a kind of relationship, an achievement
among
many actors, not all of them human, not all of them organic, not all of
them
technological.
6. Great
possibilities
for change exist
a. nothing static-
b. everything is open to being reconstituted
1. old
notions of gender (male=strong, female=weak) obsolete, due to technology
2.
affinity groups vs
determined
class structure in political world
3.
metaphor of virus is central
a. new combinations
of forms of resistance
b. interfacing across different fronts & on different basis than
before
c. terrorist networks new threat
1. mutating into new
forms, new weapons
2. al quaeda
swallowing up nationalist insurgencies map
3. american campaign
to stop the spread- borders become obsolete ex
In
the liberal logic of representation, the fetus and the jaguar must be
protected precisely from those closest to them, from their "surround."
The
power of life and death must be delegated to the epistemologically most
disinterested ventriloquist, and it is crucial to remember that all of
this is about the
power of life and death.
In
this essay I have been arguing for another way of seeing actors and
actants- and consequently another way of working to position scientists
and
science in important struggles in the world. I have stressed actants as
collective
entities doing things in a structured and structuring field of action;
I
have framed the issue in terms of articulation rather than
representation.
Human beings use names to point to themselves and other actors and
easily
mistake the names for the things. These same humans also think the
traces
of inscription devices are like names-pointers to things, such that the
inscriptions
and the things can be enrolled in dramas of substitution and inversion.
But
the things, in my view, do not pre-exist as ever-elusive, but fully
pre-packaged,
referents for the names. Other actors are more like tricksters than
that.
Boundaries take provisional, never finished shape in articulatory
practices.
The potential for the unexpected from unstripped human and unhuman
actants
enrolled in articulations-i.e., the potential for generation- remains
both
to trouble and to empower technoscience. Western philosophers sometimes
take
account of the inadequacy of names by stressing the "negativity"
inherent
in all representations. This takes us back to Spivak's remark cited
early
in this paper about the important things that we cannot not desire, but
can
never possess-or represent, because representation depends on
possession
of a passive resource, namely, the silent object, the stripped actant.
Perhaps
we can, however, "articulate" with humans and unhumans in a social
relationship,
which for us is always language-mediated (among other semiotic, i.e.,
"meaningful," mediations).
c. utopian view- move to a world beyond old dualisms
1. new creative
possibilities & liberty to become whatever can be imagined rm
2. micro-battles, not
macro-battles
3. best of both worlds
My
crude characterization does not end up with an "objective world" or
"nature," but it certainly does insist on the world. This world must
always
be articulated, from people's points of view, through "situated
knowledges"
(Haraway, 1988; 1991). These knowledges are friendly to science, but do
not
provide any grounds for history-escaping inversions and amnesia about
how
articulations get made, about their political semiotics, if you will. I
think
the world is precisely what gets lost in doctrines of representation
and
scientific objectivity
d. dystopian view - re-create systems of power and domination, in ways
that represent less equality than in past and are more difficult to
combat mc
1. more subtle forms
of control, more difficult to resist g
2. utter chaos &
dysfunction from efforts to control something that can't be
controlled jp
a. jurassic park scenario jp
b. hubris, chaos theory
examples of technology merging with human
-stem cell research
-human genome project
-fertility treatments
-surrogate mothers
flirt-texting
OLD
NEW
| Representation |
Simulation |
| Bourgeois novel |
Science fiction |
| Realism and
modernism |
Postmodernism |
| Organism |
Biotic component,
code |
| Work |
Text |
| Mimesis |
Play of signifiers |
| Depth, integrity |
Surface, boundary |
| Heat |
Noise |
| Biology as clinical
practice |
Biology as
inscription |
| Physiology |
Communications
engineering |
| Microbiology,
tuberculosis |
Immunology, AIDS |
| Magic bullet |
Immunomodulation |
| Small group |
Subsystem |
| Perfection |
Optimization |
| Eugenics |
Genetic engineering |
| Decadence |
Obsolescence |
| Hygiene |
Stress Management |
| Organic division of
labour |
Ergonomics,
cybernetics |
| Functional
specialization |
Modular construction |
| Biological
determinism |
System constraints |
| Reproduction |
Replication |
| Individual |
Replicon |
| Community ecology |
Ecosystem |
| Racial chain of
being |
United Nations
Humanism |
| Colonialism |
Transnational
capitalism |
| Nature/culture |
Fields of difference |
| Co-operation |
Communications
enhancement |
| Freud |
Lacan |
| Labour |
Robotics |
| Mind |
Artificial
intelligence |
| Second World War |
Star Wars |
| White capitalist
patriarchy |
Informatics of
domination |
"Cyberspace, absent its high-tech glitz, is the idea of
virtual consensual
community.... A virtual community is first and foremost a community of
belief.''5l
For William Gibson (1986), cyberspace is "consensual hallucination
experienced
daily by billions.... Unthinkable complexity." Cyberspace seems to be
the
consensual hallucination of too much complexity, too much articulation.
It
is the virtual reality of paranoia, a well-populated region in the last
quarter
of the Second Christian Millenium. Paranoia is the belief in the
unrelieved
density of connection, requiring, if one is to survive, withdrawal and
defense
unto death. The defended self re-emerges at the heart of relationality.
Paradoxically,
paranoia is the condition of the impossibility of remaining articulate.
In
virtual space, the virtue of articulation-i.e., the power to produce
connection-threatens
to overwhelm and finally to engulf all possibility of effective action
to
change the world.
-If individuals can
be genetically programmed, can they also be
manipulated?
-If the body determines the mind, can't we be changed by our bodily
state?
-Is reason is also chemically, biologically driven?
What happens to our assumptions about autonomy? sovereignty?
reason? morality?
How do we structure our social/political life in a way that preserves
notions of freedom & order w/o authority being imposed by larger
structures?
How do we behave politically in a world like this?