Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto proposes using the cyborg as a metaphor to challenge binary thinking. It discusses cyborgs as hybrids of machine and organism that blur the boundaries between fiction and reality, nature and culture. The cyborg identity represents a combination of political, racial, and sexual identities. The manifesto also critiques traditional concepts of gender and feminism. It argues that advancing technologies will reshape social relations and allow for new forms of identity without fixed boundaries.

1. A Cyborg Manifesto
By Donna J. Haraway
Briana Calderon
Michael Granados
Nadia Fuentes
Joseph Hollimon

2. Concepts

3. Concept #1 - Cyborgs
Cybernetic organism, a hybrid of
machine and organism…
(Haraway,1985;1991,p.456)
Briana Calderon

4. Concept Explanation
Haraway is using a cyborg as a metaphor to compare
social reality and fiction. Haraway states “The cyborg
is a matter of fiction and lived experience that
changes what counts as woman’s experience in the late
twentieth century”(p.457).
Prof. Note: The goal of the cyborg metaphor is to challenge binary ways of thinking, blurring
the boundaries between the opposites such as nature- culture, men – women, fiction – reality,
etc.
Briana Calderon

5. Concept #2 - Identity
Haraway describes the Cyborg as a mix of political, racial,
and sexual identities coming together to form a whole made of
different perspectives. Haraway went on to suggest that
“women of color" might be understood as a cyborg identity, a
potent subjectivity synthesized from fusions of outsider
identities and in the complex political-historical ayerings
of her biomythography”. (1985;1991, p. 468).
Michael Granados

6. Abbi van hook - Racial Identity
M Michael
Michael Granados

7. Concept #2 - Identity
Abbi Van Hook is an example of Haraway’s Cyborg. She is a
woman of color that was adopted and raised by a white family.
In her Ted Talk video, she describes her personal experiences
molding her racial identity. She called herself the “Black-
White” girl to her friends, and after studying abroad in
Ghana, she realized her heritage shaped a part of her
identity.
Michael Granados

8. Concept #3 - Women
Gender is changing and is
changeable.‘Women’ were created
as a social category, constructed
by sexual scientific discourses
and social practices, Haraway
believes that their isn’t even a
state of “being” female.
Nadia Fuentes

9. Concept #3 - Women Explanation
Haraway looks to Julia Kristeva who views that
women appeared as a “historical group after the
Second World War.” Sex and sexuality are meant for
reproduction - ‘women’ are destined to have the
role of mother. The cyborg is then a way to get
around the issue of reproduction since they do not
reproduce. Haraway also criticizes traditional
feminism with its boundaries of identity politics.
Nadia Fuentes

10. Quotes

11. Quote # 1
“Unlike the hopes of Frankenstein's monster, the cyborg does
not expect its father to save it through a restoration of
the garden; that is, through the fabrication of a
heterosexual mate, through its completion in a finished
whole, a city and cosmos. The cyborg does not dream of a
community on the model of the organic
family...”(Haraway,1985;1995,p.458)
Briana Calderon

12. Quote #1 explanation
Haraway explains how a cyborg’s focused is not to create human
connection nor crave attention in any way. The duty or purpose of a
cyborg is to survive on their own because they are already complete
with in themselves. The reading mentions western culture is about
self discovery, developing fullness, and bliss with other
individuals. Even though that is the theme for Western culture, a
cyborg is the complete opposite. We can compare a cyborg within
ourselves because humans crave affection and intimacy however, we use
devices such as phones to deflect that connection.
Briana Calderon

13. Quote #2
“Communications technologies and biotechnologies are the crucial
tools recrafting our bodies. These tools embody and enforce new
social relations for women world-wide. Technologies and
scientific discourses can be partially understood as
formalizations, i.e., as frozen moments, of the fluid social
interactions constituting them, but they should also be viewed as
instruments for enforcing meanings. The boundary is permeable
between tool and myth, instrument and concept, historical systems
of social relations and historical anatomies of possible bodies,
including objects of knowledge. Indeed, myth and tool mutually
constitute each other” (Haraway, pg. 465).
Michael Granados

14. Quote #2 Explanation
This quote is an example of Haraway’s metaphor of the Cyborg
describing the new feminist. As advances in new technology
arise, so do new forms of communication for the 20th century
feminist. Just as the Cyborg in science fiction creates a new
mythos separate from the ones of its creators, so too will
the new feminist use the new communication technologies
available to her to forge a new mythos separate from the
current patriarchal society.
Michael Granados

15. Quote #3
“I would suggest that cyborgs have more to do with regeneration
and are suspicious of the reproductive matrix and of most
birthing. For salamanders, regeneration after injury, such as
the loss of a limb, involves regrowth of structure and
restoration of function with the constant possibility of
twinning or other odd topographical productions at the site of
former injury. The regrown limb can be monstrous, duplicated,
potent. We have all been injured, profoundly. We require
regeneration, not rebirth, and the possibilities for our
reconstitution include the utopian dream of the hope for a
monstrous world without gender” (Haraway, pg.475).
Nadia Fuentes

16. Quote #3 Explanation
In this quote Haraway is trying to express how the cyborg is
about regeneration - there is a part of you that evolves rather
than the invention of a whole new identity. This evolving is
supposed to lead the world into more of a fluid society where
the constructs such as gender no longer exist.
She gives the example of a salamander having lost a limb and how
they can restore their limbs, though not without the possibility
of monstrous regrowth.
Nadia Fuentes

17. Artifact

18. Artifact -
This scene from the movie “I am
Mother” is an example of a modern
representation of the “cyborg”
concept. Throughout the movie we
see Mother, the cyborg, raising
daughter, the young girl.
Daughter is raised to believe
that the outside world is
chemically toxic and unsafe to
live in, causing mankind to go
extinct. and that it is mother’s
job to save the human race.
However, in this scene it is
revealed that Mother and other
cyborgs actually carried out the
mass extinction after realizing
that Humans were too flawed
mentally and emotionally to be a
part of an ideal world.Joseph Hollimon

19. Despite the mass extinction, Mother
doesn’t want the human race gone
completely. Mother acknowledges that it
was created by humans and believes that
there is a place for them in the world,
but its goal to create a “perfect” race
of humans couldn’t be achieved with the
humans already existing. Mother’s
strategy is to raise new humans without
knowledge of previous human behaviors
that lead to destructive human
domination, with daughter being her
most recent attempt after a couple
failed attempts. I like this scene
because it shows the process of human
birth through machines the cyborg
created and it will serve as the only
idea of birth that the new humans will
know, thus eliminating the role of women
as reproducers.
Joseph Hollimon

20. What would Donna Haraway say about this artifact and Its Relation to the
Writing?
I think Haraway might find the cyborg’s name “Mother” to
be ironic due to its acknowledgement of the motherly role
assigned to women in today’s society, and might also find
the fact that the cyborg appreciates its human creators to
be unrealistic. However, I think she would sympathize with
the way that the cyborg aims for a world that is free from
toxic traits of humanity and ideologies of western
civilization. A good example is the way that the birth
process depicted in the film eliminates the role of women
as reproducers in this new world.
Joseph Hollimon

21. How Our ClassMates can use this reading in their final essay...
● Classmates would be able to use “I am Mother” in their final essay by
connecting aspects of the film and its representation of a cyborg world to
Haraway’s concept of a cyborg and also pointing out ways the two are different.
Watching the entire movie would obviously be most helpful for more examples,
but in any case the clips shown still touch on interesting concepts of human-
machine coexistence and elimination of human created ideologies and behaviors
that can be used either to argue in agreement with Haraway’s manifesto or make
alternative points.
● The reading will be useful in the final essay because of how references can be
made to personal identity and how one’s standing in society can affect their
communication
● They will understand a feminist theory and can use it to compare to the
feminist movements today
● The reading explains relationships between social relations of science and
technology
Joseph Hollimon

22. References
Harawary, D.J.(1985;1991). A Cyborg Manifesto. Artificial Life: Critical Contexts. 455-
475. Retrieved from https://csusb.blackboard.com/bbcswebdav/pid-2341826-dt-content-rid-
13104317_1/courses/196COMM32170/Haraway-CyborgManifesto.pdf
Murno, K. (Producer), White, T. (Producer), & Sputore, G. (Director). I Am Mother [Motion
Picture]. (2019). Australia: Netflix.
Van Hook, A. [Tedx Talks] (2015, March 17). Unpacking My Baggage: Re-framing Racial
Identity | Abbi Van Hook | TEDxNorthCentralCollege [Video File]. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U05qmgkq80Q