Philosophy 101 Unit 1

Wow! Okay so writing this post is partially to help me work through my thoughts. I’m having a really hard time understanding what the hell she’s trying to say because she makes soo many allusions to things I have no knowledge of. Here goes….

I believe that she is trying to say that women need to “get on” top of the whole cyborg and technology culture because this avenue is still open for change. From a linguist perspective, our language is very gendered. So much of our social interactions are gendered and thus limiting to women. Often times, these same limitations are posed towards minorities as well. “Liberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative apprehension, of oppression, and so of possibility” (139). By making a sizable indent in cyber culture, feminists can define the cyborg. By actively constructing the cyborg identity, Haraway believes women can create a realm that isn’t limiting. “The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women’s experience in the late twentieth century” (139). The cyborg will impact the women’s movement because it has no gender. Currently, until the notion that we are all cyborgs is widely accepted, this field is still open terrain. By constructing the reality of cyborgs, one can affect change on “social and bodily realit{ties}” (139). 

Just as Gehlen believed, Haraway claims our society has a “tradition of reproduction of the self from the reflections of the other” (140).  Whereas Gehlen claims that humans manipulate and use nature to suit our needs, Haraway insists that “Nature and culture are reworked; the one can no longer be the resource for appropriation or incorporation by the other” (140).

I believe that Haraway brings up a very interesting point about our own origin stories. They are very gendered in that our interactions with our mothers or even our own experiences in a gendered role impacts how we relate to our surroundings. She mentions the “oedipal calendar,” {yes I had to look it up} for those of you who don’t know what that means it refers to the oedipus complex, a complex of emotions aroused in a young child by an unconscious sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex. The uniqueness of the cyborg is that it doesn’t have an origin story that entails this (the oedipus complex) or any other gendered origins. Because of that, we {I believe she refers to women in the feminist movement} have the wonderful opportunity to affect change. 

There is this notion that online, boundaries of race, class, and gender are erased. I believe that Haraway agrees with this notion but insists that this concept be monopolized by feminists? Clarify anyone?

I believe that Haraway cites the importance of recognizing consequences of ones actions and the necessity of being aware of our inability or at least our track record of our lack to identify the consequences of our actions. She states, “The home, workplace, market, public arena, the body itself–all can be dispersed and interfaced in nearly infinite, polymorphous ways, with large consequences for women and others—consequences that themselves are very different for different people and which make potent oppositional international movements difficult to imagine and essential for survival” (144). 

A later quote that supports my earlier claim that Haraway insists that women must construct the cyborg, “The cyborg is a kind of disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and personal self. This is the self feminists must code” (144). Since there is no real, firm, or established notion about cyborgs, women must “code” or create this image to their benefit. Since the cyborg is very much considered to be a human or at least we identify with them, women need to have a say in constructing this image. 

Haraway spends some time discussing the negative impact technology has had on women. The “homework economy” refers to a “restructuring of work that broadly has the same characteristics formerly ascribed to female jobs, jobs literally done only by women” (146). Many types of jobs are being feminized in that they are essentially being made extremely vulnerable. Technologies of sorts have replaced many men in the workplace, and there is ever more pressure on women to generate income for the family unit as well as keep up with the “home” front. 

Another point that Haraway touches on is this notion of “identity tourism.” I don’t think she uses this term, but it was brought up in an article I read for my GWS class. She does say, “These are the technologies that promise ultimate mobility and perfect exchange–and incidentally enable tourism, that perfect practice of mobility and exchange, to emerge as one of the world’s largest single industries” (147). The internet allows us to reinvent ourselves and take on other identities (opposing genders, reside in a different class, identify with a different demographic than our own). Technology enables this easy tourism because there are no consequences. People believe that they “understand” what it is like to be some other identity because they have played with their online identity. However, they can’t truly understand, because they don’t have a true, lived experience.