Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto" explores the concept of a cyborg as a hybrid of machine and organism that challenges traditional boundaries and binaries. Haraway argues that cyborgs disrupt the divisions between human/nonhuman, culture/nature, and male/female. By blurring these lines, cyborgs subvert dominant power structures and hierarchies. Cyborgs also complicate notions of gender by showing it to be a social construct rather than something essential or innate. The internet further enables cyborg identities that are part human and part machine.

1. Cyborgs A cyborg manifesto Donna Haraway

2. What is a cyborg? ‘A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction’ – Donna Haraway A Cyborg Manifesto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urVXWUD8Q3Y http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQiwRrR-LeE&feature=PlayList&p=C925E7278B12CA06&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=7

3. Domination Haraway labels the postmodern technological configuration the ‘informatics of domination’ Representation Simulation Bourgeois novel, realism Science fiction,postmodernism Organism Biotic Component Depth, integrity Surface, boundary Heat Noise Biology as clinical practice Biology as inscription Physiology Communications Engineering Small group Subsystem Perfection Optimization Eugenics Population Control Sex Genetic engineering Labour Robotics Mind Artificial intelligence Second World War Star Wars White Capitalis Patriarchy Informatics of Domination

4. Breaking down binaries Human/nonhuman Culture/nature Male/female Technology/biology Divine /man made Reality/ representation Subject/ object Vs.

5. Cyborgs, sex and gender Cyborgs challenge gender binaries and support the idea that gender is socially acquired. "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). Gender as language, codes and signs. Halberstam states ‘ gender is also not innate or essential, but learned imitative behaviour that can be progammed’ and ‘feminity and masculinity are always mechanical and artificial’ The cyborg transgresses gender sterotypes and is a liminal being with it its own subjectivity.

6. Cyborgs and Feminism Donna Haraway- Influential in feminist discourse Ecofeminists versus technofeminists Ecofeminists critique technology Technofeminists argue technology is empowering Cyber-feminism ‘ The cyborg is a kind of disassembled and reassembled, postodern collective and personal self. This is a self feminists must code.’ ( Haraway 163)

7. Cyborg- Online identities Heightened connection to machine Online identities - Multi identity, partiality The internet allows for the deconstruction of binary genders “ The new identity is formed from the relationship between the original identity and the internet. It is a cyborg identity, part machine, part human -Ted Kaiser The user as a cyborg

8. Bibliography Sofoulis, Zoe (2002) ‘Cyberquake: Haraway’s manifesto’ in Tofts, Darren, Annemarie Jonson and Allesio Cavallaro (2002) Prefiguring cyberculture: an intellectual history , Sydney: Power Publications, pp 84-103. Haraway, Donna (1991) ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ in Haraway, Donna J (1991) Simians, cyborgs and women. Reinvention of nature , New York: Routledge, pp 149-181. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Cyborg_Manifesto http://www.cyberartsweb.org/cpace/cyborg/advant.html http://www.egs.edu/faculty/haraway.html