Cyborg Manifesto Detesto
I'm pretty sure I've had about all I can stand of Donna Haraway. Which is unfortunate, because I'm also pretty sure that I agree with her on cyborgism.
The perspective that the cyborg age is already happening is not foreign to me. As an avid reader of science fiction for most of my life, I feel that I've been prepared for this scenario for years. I see her points regarding the cyborg as the destroyer of the human/machine hierarchy. I see it everywhere. I see it when I think about how staplers used to look; heavy, metallic clunky things that made a lot of noise and were indispensable to a bureaucracy. Now they are these sleek, lightweight ergonomic devices, integrated into our body's design so as to minimize carpal tunnel syndrome, that function with smoothness and silence in fastening together paper, a material that, ironically, we will need less of as we press on into the cyborg/perfect stapler age.
What I find irksome is that her ideas only become lucid when expressed through interpreters, such as an interviewer, or an article about her. She is her own kind of cyborg: she is an academic fused with the technology of postmodern rhetoric. She is like The Terminator, except the The Terminator is not above presenting it's thesis in an accessible manner.
I'm no apologist for capitalism, and I do think that I agree with many of the points around which she performs her intellectual Mummenschanz, but is this lobbing of snowballs from a left-wing academic ivory tower at "phallogocentric culture" doing any good for the single mom with gender identity issues and two kids to feed? I have my doubts.
Also, I think she was remiss in not including Frank Herbert, Theodore Sturgeon, and Phillip Jose Farmer in her list of SF authors that explore gender boundaries in their fiction. But whatever.
I realize how glib all this must sound, but it is just my honest, gut reaction to the reading. I need to share it with someone, and it makes a lot more sense to do it here than to call my friends who haven't been assigned this reading and ruining their evening with my ranting. Thank you.
The perspective that the cyborg age is already happening is not foreign to me. As an avid reader of science fiction for most of my life, I feel that I've been prepared for this scenario for years. I see her points regarding the cyborg as the destroyer of the human/machine hierarchy. I see it everywhere. I see it when I think about how staplers used to look; heavy, metallic clunky things that made a lot of noise and were indispensable to a bureaucracy. Now they are these sleek, lightweight ergonomic devices, integrated into our body's design so as to minimize carpal tunnel syndrome, that function with smoothness and silence in fastening together paper, a material that, ironically, we will need less of as we press on into the cyborg/perfect stapler age.
What I find irksome is that her ideas only become lucid when expressed through interpreters, such as an interviewer, or an article about her. She is her own kind of cyborg: she is an academic fused with the technology of postmodern rhetoric. She is like The Terminator, except the The Terminator is not above presenting it's thesis in an accessible manner.
I'm no apologist for capitalism, and I do think that I agree with many of the points around which she performs her intellectual Mummenschanz, but is this lobbing of snowballs from a left-wing academic ivory tower at "phallogocentric culture" doing any good for the single mom with gender identity issues and two kids to feed? I have my doubts.
Also, I think she was remiss in not including Frank Herbert, Theodore Sturgeon, and Phillip Jose Farmer in her list of SF authors that explore gender boundaries in their fiction. But whatever.
I realize how glib all this must sound, but it is just my honest, gut reaction to the reading. I need to share it with someone, and it makes a lot more sense to do it here than to call my friends who haven't been assigned this reading and ruining their evening with my ranting. Thank you.
posted by Woody Pase at 12:55 AM
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