"A Cyborg Manifesto" is an essay written by Donna Haraway and published in 1984.

In it, the concept of the cyborg is a rejection of rigid boundaries, notably those separating
"human" from "animal" and "human" from "machine." She writes: "The cyborg does not
dream of community on the model of the organic family, this time without the oedipal
project. The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and
cannot dream of returning to dust."[1]
The Manifesto criticizes traditional notions of feminism, particularly feminist focuses
on identity politics, and encouraging instead coalition through affinity. She uses the metaphor
of a cyborg to urge feminists to move beyond the limitations of traditional gender, feminism,
and politics; consequently, the "Manifesto" is considered one of the milestones in the
development of feminist posthumanist theory.[2]
Major points
Haraway begins the Manifesto by explaining three boundary breakdowns since the
20th Century that have allowed for her hybrid, cyborg myth: the breakdown of boundaries
between human and animal, animal-human and machine, and physical and non-physical.
Evolution has blurred the lines between human and animal; 20th Century machines have
made ambiguous the lines between natural and artificial; and microelectronics and the
political invisibility of cyborgs have confused the lines of physicality.[1]
Cyborg theory
Haraway's cyborg theory rejects the notions of essentialism, proposing instead a
chimeric, monstrous world of fusions between animal and machine. Cyborg theory relies on
writing as "the technology of cyborgs," and asserts that "cyborg politics is the struggle for
language and the struggle against perfect communication, against the one code that translates
all meaning perfectly, the central dogma of phallogocentrism." Instead, Haraway’s cyborg
calls for a non-essentialized, material-semiotic metaphor capable of uniting diffuse political
coalitions along the lines of affinity rather than identity. Following Lacanian feminists such
as Luce Irigaray, Haraway’s work addresses the chasm between feminist discourses and the
dominant language of Western patriarchy. As Haraway explains, “grammar is politics by
other means,” and effective politics require speaking in the language of domination.[1]
As she details in a chart of the paradigmatic shifts from modern to postmodern
epistemology within the Manifesto, the unified human subject of identity has shifted to the
hybridized posthuman of technoscience, from “representation” to “simulation,” “bourgeois
novel” to “science fiction,” “reproduction” to “replication,” and “white capitalist patriarchy”
to “informatics of domination.”[1] While Haraway’s “ironic dream of a common language” is
inspired by Irigaray’s argument for a discourse other than patriarchy, she rejects Irigaray’s
essentializing construction of woman-as-not-male to argue for a linguistic community of
situated, partial knowledges in which no one is innocent.
Criticism of traditional feminism
Haraway takes issue with some traditional feminists, reflected in statements describing
how "women more than men somehow sustain daily life, and so have a privileged
epistemological position potentially." The views of traditional feminism operate under the
totalizing assumptions that all men are one way, and women another, whereas "a cyborg
theory of wholes and parts," does not desire to explain things in total theory. Haraway
suggests that feminists should move beyond naturalism and essentialism, criticizing feminist
tactics as "identity politics" that victimize those excluded, and she proposes that it is better
strategically to confuse identities. Her criticism mainly focuses on socialist and radical
feminism. The former, she writes, achieves "to expand the category of labour to what (some)
women did"(298) Socialist feminism does not naturalize but rather builds a unity that was
non-existent before -namely the woman worker. On the other hand, radical feminism,
according to Catherine MacKinnon, describes a world in which the woman only exists in
opposition to the man. The concept of woman is socially constructed within the patriarchal
structure of society and woman only exist because men have made them exist. The woman as
a self does not exist. Haraway critizes both when writing that "my complaint about
socialist/Marxian standpoints is their unintended erasure of polyvocal, unassimilable, radical
difference made visible in anti-colonial discourse and practice" and "MacKinnon's intentional
erasure of all difference through the device of the 'essential' non-existence of women is not
reassuring" (299). H[1]
Haraway also indirectly critiques white feminism by highlighting the struggles of women of
color: she suggests that a woman of color “might be understood as a cyborg identity, a potent
subjectivity synthesized from fusions of outsider identities and in the complex political-
historical layerings of her ‘biomythography.’"[1]
To counteract the essentializing and anachronistic rhetoric of spiritual ecofeminists, who
were fighting patriarchy with modernist constructions of female-as-nature and earth mothers,
Haraway employs the cyborg to refigure feminism into cybernetic code.
Call to action
Haraway calls for a revision of the concept of gender, moving away from Western
patriarchal essentialism and toward "the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world
without gender," stating that "Cyborgs might consider more seriously the partial, fluid,
sometimes aspect of sex and sexual embodiment. Gender might not be global identity after
all, even if it has profound historical breadth and depth."[1]
Haraway also calls for a reconstruction of identity, no longer dictated by naturalism
and taxonomy but instead by affinity, wherein individuals can construct their own groups by
choice. In this way, groups may construct a "post-modernist identity out of otherness,
difference, and specificity" as a way to counter Western traditions of exclusive identification.
Updates and revisions
Although Haraway's metaphor of the cyborg has been labelled as a post-gender
statement, Haraway has clarified her stance on post-genderism in some interviews.[3] She
acknowledges that her argument in the Manifesto seeks to challenge the necessity for
categorization of gender, but does not correlate this argument to post-genderism. She clarifies
this distinction because post-genderism is often associated with the discourse of the utopian
concept of being beyond masculinity and femininity. Haraway notes that gender constructs
are still prevalent and meaningful, but are troublesome and should therefore be eliminated as
categories for identity.[3]
Applications of The Cyborg
Although Donna Haraway intended her concept of the cyborg to be a feminist critique,
she acknowledges that other scholars and popular media have taken her concept and applied
it to different contexts. Haraway is aware and receptive of the different uses of her concept of
the cyborg, but admits "very few people are taking what I consider all of its parts". [3] Wired
Magazine overlooked the feminist theory of the cyborg and instead used it to make a more
literal commentary about the enmeshment of humans and technology.[4] Despite this,
Haraway also recognizes that new feminist scholars "embrace and use the cyborg of the
manifesto to do what they want for their own purposes".[3]
Patchwork Girl
Shelley Jackson, author of Patchwork Girl.
"Patchwork Girl's thematic focus on the connections between monstrosity, subjectivity, and
new reproductive technologies is apparent from its very first page, when readers, or users,
open the hypertext to find a picture of a scared and naked female body sewn together with a
single dotted line...Readers enter the text by clicking on this body and following its 'limbs' or
links to different sections of the text."[5] The Patchwork Girl, the aborted female monster
created by Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein, or The Modern
Prometheus, is an aberrant and monstrous creature that is "part male, part female, part animal,
175 years old, and 'razed' up through hypertext technology."[5] The monster, following her
destruction by Victor, is sewn back together by Mary Shelley herself, while simultaneously
becoming Mary's lover; she is thus, "a cyborg who is queer, dis-proportioned, and visibly
scarred. She both facilitates and undermines preoccupations with the benefits and dangers of
reproductive technologies by embracing all of the monstrosities that reproductive/fetal
screenings are imagined to 'catch' and one day prevent."[5] The Patchwork Girl embraces
Haraway's conception of a cybernetic posthuman being in both her physical multiplicity and
her challenge towards "the images and fantasies sustaining reproductive politics."[5]
"Cyborg Goddesses"
Turkish critical scholar Leman Giresunlu uses Haraway's cyborg as framework to examine
current science fiction movies such as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Resident Evil in her
essay "Cyborg Goddesses: The Mainframe Revisited".[6] In this essay, she explores how her
new concept of the cyborg goddess, a female figure "capable of inflicting pain and pleasure
simultaneously", can be used to make sense of how female representation is shifting towards
a more multidimensional stance. Giresunlu builds from Haraway's cyborg because the cyborg
goddess goes beyond "offering a way out from [the] duality" and instead provides how
spirituality and technology work together to form a complex and more accurate
representation of women.[6]
"Mind Over Matter"
In her essay "Mind Over Matter: Mental Evolution and Physical Devolution in The Incredible
Shrinking Man", American critical scholar Ruthellen Cunnally uses Haraway's cyborg to help
make sense of how Robert Scott Carey, the protagonist of The Incredible Shrinking Man,
transforms into a cyborg in the midst of a metaphor of cold war politics in his home. As
Robert continues to shrink, the gendered power dynamic between him and his wife Louise
shifts from "the realm of husband/wife into the mode of mother/son".[7] When Robert finds
himself lost in the feminine space of the basement, an area of the house that was reserved for
Louise's domestic duties of sewing and washing, he is forced to fight for his life and reclaim
his masculinity. Although he is able to conquer some of his foes and regain his "manhood",
the gender lines do not become established again because there is no one to share and
implement the gendered power structure with. Robert's transformation presents "an existence
in which acceptance and meaning are released from the limitations of patriarchal dualisms",
which aligns with Haraway's cyborg.[7]
Criticism
Traditional feminists have criticized "A Cyborg Manifesto" as anti-feminist because it denies
any commonalities of the female experience.[3] In the Manifesto, Haraway writes "there is
nothing about being 'female' that naturally binds women",[1] which goes against a defining
characteristic of traditional feminism that calls women to join together in order to advocate
for members of their gender.
Criticism and controversy were built into the essay's publication history: the East Coast
Collective of the Socialist Review found the piece "a naive embrace of technology" and
advocated against its publication, while The Berkeley Collective ultimately insisted that it go
to print.[8] The essay has been described as "controversial" and "viral" in its circulation
through multiple academic departments and disciplinary boundaries, contributing to the
critical discourse on its claims.[9] This controversiality was matched by its omnipresence;
Jackie Orr, Associate Professor of Sociology at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University,
writes, "It is hard to be a feminist graduate student in the U.S. humanities or social sciences
after 1985 and not be touched in some way by the cyborg manifesto."[10] The rapid adoption
of the article in academic circles also increased the pace of the critical conversation
surrounding the work, and in 1990, Haraway felt that the essay had "acquired a surprise half
life," which made it "impossible to rewrite" and necessitated revisiting the topic in her
subsequent publications.[11]
Many critiques of "A Cyborg Manifesto" focus on a basic level of reader comprehension and
writing style, such as Orr's observation that "undergraduate students in a science and
technology class find the cyborg manifesto curiously relevant but somewhat impenetrable to
read." [12] [13] This is corroborated by Helen Merrick and Margret Grebowicz's observation
that scientists who reviewed Primate Visions had similar issues, particularly as related to
Haraway's use of irony.[14] Judy Wajcman, Professor of Sociology at the London School of
Economics and Political Science, suggests in TechnoFeminism that "the openness of her
writing to a variety of readings is intentional," which "can sometimes make Haraway difficult
to interpret;" however, it does not seem that Wajcman critiques Haraway's tone for its
capability to encompass more possibilities, rather than limit them. Wajcman concludes her
chapter "Send in the Cyborgs" on a critical note, claiming that "Certainly, Haraway is much
stronger at providing evocative figurations of a new feminist subjectivity than she is at
providing guidelines for a practical emancipatory politics." [15]
Critiques[16] of Haraway have also centered on the accessibility of the thematic topics she
discusses in her writing, and according to third-wave feminist readings, her work "assumes a
reader who is familiar with North American culture," and posits that "readers without the
appropriate cultural capital are...likely to find it infuriatingly obscure and
impenetrable."[15] Therefore, Haraway's symbolism is representative of North American
culture symbolizing a "non-universalizing vision for feminist strategies" and "has been taken
up within cyberfeminism as the symbol of an essential female being." [15] Considering the
question of accessibility more broadly, disability studies have focused on Haraway's essay,
noting the absence of "any kind of critical engagement with disability...disabled bodies are
simply presented as exemplary...requiring neither analysis nor critique"—a gap which Alison
Kafer, Professor of Feminist Studies at Southwestern University, attempts to address in
Feminist, Queer, Crip..[17] Wajcman also argues that Haraway's view of technology in "A
Cyborg Manifesto" is perhaps too totalizing, and that the binary of "the cyborg solution and
the goddess solution" ultimately "caricatures feminism" by focusing too readily on a
dichotomy that may in fact be a false one.[15]
In Unfinished Work-From Cyborg to Cognisphere, N. Katherine Hayles questions the
validity of cyborg as a unit of analysis. She says that because of the complicated situation of
technology and media, “cyborg is no longer the individual person – or for that matter, the
individual cyborg – is no longer the appropriate unit of analysis, if indeed it ever was”.[18]
As for the relationships between cyborg and religion, Robert A. Campbell argues that “in
spite of Haraway's efforts to move beyond traditional Western dualisms and offer a new hope
for women, and by extension a of humanity and the world, what she in fact offers is a further
legitimation for buying into the not so new American civil religion of high technology.” He
says that “in spite of what some may view as a radical critique of the present and a potentially
frightening prescription for the future, the stark reality about Haraway's "postmodern reality"
is that there is no such thing.”[19]
Beyond its presence in academic context, "A Cyborg Manifesto" has also had popular
traction including Wired Magazine's piece by Hari Kunzru [20]and Mute
Magazine, [21] BuzzFeed, [22] as well as Vice Magazine [23] . Retrospective articles consistently
mark its anniversary.[24]
Sonographic fetus as cyborg
Scholar Marilyn Maness Mehaffy writes that the "sonographic fetus is in many ways the
ultimate cyborg in that it is 'created' in a space of virtuality that straddles the conventional
boundary between an organic body and a digital text."[25] Yet it is this cyborg that presents a
limit to Haraway's posthuman theory. The sonographic fetus, as posited by scholar Heather
Latimer, "is publicly envisioned as both independent of [its mother's] body and as
independent of the sonographic equipment used to read this body. We know that fetal images
are depictions, yet the sonogram invokes a documentary-like access to fetuses that makes it
easy to ignore this, which in turn can limit the authority and agency of pregnant women."[5] In
positioning the fetus as independent, and consequently oppositional, to the pregnant mother,
these reproductive technologies "reinscribe stable meanings to the human/machine dualism
they supposedly disrupt."[5] Valerie Hartouni argues, "most reproductive technologies have
assimilated into the 'order of nature'"[26] which would make Haraway's vision of a
regenerative species, unrestricted by heteronormative conceptions of reproduction,
unattainable in the sonographic fetus.
Publication history
Haraway began writing the Manifesto in 1983 to address the Socialist Review request of
American socialist feminists to ponder over the future of socialist feminism in the context of
the early Reagan era and the decline of leftist politics. The first versions of the essay had a
strong socialist and European connection that the Socialist Review East Coast Collective
found too controversial to publish. The Berkeley Socialist Review Collective published the
essay in 1985 under the editor Jeff Escoffier.[3] The essay was most widely read as part of
Haraway's 1991 book Simians, Cyborgs and Women.[27]
References

1. Full text of the article "Cyborg Manifesto" (an archived copy, in the Wayback Machine).
It is the full text of the article: Haraway, Donna Jeanne (1991). "A Cyborg Manifesto:
Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century". Simians,
Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge. ISBN 0415903866.
2. Ferrando, Francesca (2014). "Posthumanism". Kilden Journal of Gender Research. 2:
168–172. Retrieved 5 December 2016.
3. Haraway, Donna (2004). "'Cyborgs, Coyotes, and Dogs: A Kinship of Feminist
Figurations' and 'There are Always More Things Going on Than You Thought!
Methodologies as Thinking Technologies'". The Haraway Reader. Routledge. pp. 321–
341. ISBN 0-415-96688-4.
4. Kunzru, Hari. "You Are Cyborg". Retrieved 25 April 2014.
5. Latimer, Heather. "Reproductive Technologies, Fetal Icons, and Genetic Freaks: Shelley
Jackson’s Patchwork Girl and the Limits and Possibilities of Donna Haraway’s Cyborg."
Modern Fiction Studies 57.2 (2011): 318-335.
6. Giresunlu, Leman (2009). "Cyborg Goddesses: The Mainframe Revisited". At the
Interface / Probing the Boundaries: 157–187.
7. Cunnally, Ruthellen (March 2013). "Mind Over Matter: Mental Evolution and Physical
Devolution in The Incredible Shrinking Man". Journal of Popular Film and
Television. 41: 2–9. doi:10.1080/01956051.2012.674070.
8. Kafer, Alison (2013). Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana: Indiana University Press. p. 103.
9. Schneider, Joseph (Summer 2012). "Haraway's Viral Cyborg". Women's Studies
Quarterly. 40 (1/2): 295. JSTOR 23333459.
10. Orr, Jackie (Summer 2012). "Materializing a Cyborg's Manifesto". Women's Studies
Quarterly. 40 (1/2): 276. JSTOR 23333457.
11. Gandy, Matthew (2010). "The Persistence of Complexity: Re-reading Donna Haraway's
Cyborg Manifesto". AA Files. 60: 42. JSTOR 41378495.
12. Orr, Jackie (Summer 2012). "Materializing a Cyborg's Manifesto". Women's Studies
Quarterly. 40 (1/2): 275. JSTOR 23333457.
13. Hamner, M. Gail. "The Work of Love: Feminist Politics and the Injunction to Love."
Opting for the Margins: Postmodernity and Liberation in Christian Theology. Joerg
Rieger, ed. Oxford University Press. 2003.
14. Grebowicz, Margret; Merrick, Helen (2013). Beyond the Cyborg: Adventures with
Donna Haraway. New York: NY: Columbia University Press. p. 158. Retrieved 9
October 2015.
15. Wajcman, Judy (2013). TechnoFeminism. John Wiley & Sons. Retrieved 9
October 2015.
16. Cyborgs, Coyotes, and Dogs: A Kinship of Feminist Figurations and There are Always
More Things Going on Than You Thought! Methodologies as Thinking Technologies.
Routledge. pp. 321–341. ISBN 0-415-96688-4.
17. Kafer, Alison (2013). Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana: Indiana University Press. p. 104.
18. Hayles, Katherine. "Unfinished Work: From Cyborg to Cognisphere". Theory, Culture &
Society. 23.7-8: 159–66.
19. Campbell, Robert A. (2001). "CYBORG SALVATION HISTORY: Donna Haraway and
the Future of Religion". Humboldt Journal of Social Relations. 26, No. 1/2: 154–173.
20. Kunzru, Hari. "You Are Cyborg". Wired. Wired. Retrieved 21 September2015.
21. Fernandez, Maria; Malik, Suhail. "Whatever Happened to Cyborg Manifesto?". Mute.
Mute. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
22. Mlotek, Haley. "You're A Woman, I'm A Machine Self-help for the "working woman"
isn't helping". BuzzFeed.com. BuzzFeed. Retrieved 12 October 2015.
23. Wyck, Julia. "Siri is Not 'Genderless'". Vice. Vice. Retrieved 25 November 2017.
24. "25 years later: Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto"". sentient developments.
Retrieved 22 September 2015.
25. Mehaffy, Marilyn Maness (2000). "Fetal attractions: the limit of cyborg theory".
Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. 29 (2): 177–
194. doi:10.1080/00497878.2000.9979307.
26. Hartouni, Valerie. Cultural Conceptions: On Reproductive Technologies and the
Remaking of Life. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1997.
27. Haraway, Donna Jeanne (1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: the reinvention of nature.
New York: Routledge. pp. 149–182. ISBN 978-0415903875.