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Donna J. Haraway
A CyborgManifesto
(1985;1991)
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LiterarytheoristDonnaHaraway(b. 1944)berongsto a schoolof thought
knownas post-structuralism,
a philosophical
and literarytheorydatingfrom
6. PPEP is an acronlrmfor smallestgap, or "plus petit €cart possible-,'[Trans.]
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seetraditionalWesternrationalistphilosophy
the late 1960s.Post-structuralists
- pairedsetsof oppositeconcepts
as a flawedsystembasedon dichotomies
male/female,
andhuman/machine
- that arepresented
suchasWhite/Black,
that serveto heighten
asnaturaltruthsbut that arein factfictionaloppositions
theoryseeksto underthe statusof one termoverthe other,Post-structuralist
powerrelationsby showinghow thesedichotomies
mineoppressive
arefalse
ln thisinfluentialessay,
and alwaysbreakdown undercloseexamination.
the ideaof the cyborg- an amalgamof humanand
Harawayproposes
biological
andmechanical-asthe modelfor a newform of conmachine,
Thecyborgfor Harawayrepresents
and politicalactivism.
a hybrid,
sciousness
ambiguous,
or mixed,stateof being- a morecomplex,
andfluididentitythat
in our politicaland personal
canfreeusfrom the tyrannyof binaryoppositions
Likemanypost-structuralist
critics,Harawayusesa denseand
relationships.
prosestylethat mayseemdauntingat first,but readerswho are
challenging
will soonbeginto enjoythe audacityand evocative
willingto suspenddisbelief
forceof her metaphors
andwill discover,
as her keytermsgraduallygainresonanceand poweroverthe courseof the text,that sheis a poetas muchas a
philosopher.
is an essential
Theinterplayof textualreferences
elementof Haraway's
writing,but canbe dauntingfor the generalreader.
Accordingly,
someof
footnoteshavebeeneditedfor thisedition,with the intentof keepHaraway's
ing the focuson Haraway's
own argumentwhilestillconveying
a senseof the
provide.
richcounterpoint
thesereferences
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AN IRONIC DREAM OF A COMMON LANGUAGE FOR WOMEN
IN THE INTEGRATEDCIRCUIT
This chapteris an efTortto build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism,and materialism,Perhapsmore faithful as blasphemyis
faithful, than asreverentworshipand identification.Blasphemyhasalways
seemedto require taking thingsvery seriously.I know no better stanceto
adopt from within the secular-religious,
evangelicaltraditions of United
Statespolitics,includingthe politicsof socialistfeminism.Blasphemy
protects one from the moral majoritywithin, while still insistingon the need
for community.Blasphemyis not apostasy.Irony is about contradictions
that do not resolveinto largerwholes,evendialectically,about the tension
of holding incompatiblethings togetherbecauseboth or all are necessary
and true. Irony is abouthumor and seriousplay.It is alsoa rhetoricalstrategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoredwithin
socialist-feminism.
At the center of my ironic faith, my blasphemy,is the
imageof the cyborg.
A cyborgis a cyberneticorganism,a hybrid of machine and organism,
a creatureof socialreality as well as a creatureof fiction. Socialreality is
lived socialrelations,oui most important political construction,,
-oildchangingfiction. The internationa]women'smovementshave constructed
"women'sexperience,"as well as uncoveredor discoveredthis crucial collective object. This experienceis a fiction and fact of the most crucial,
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political kind. Liberationrests on the constructionof the consciousness,
the imaginativeapprehension,of oppression,and so of possibility.The
cyborgis a matter of fiction and lived experiencethat changeswhat counts
aswomen'sexperiencein the late twentiethcentury.This is a struggleover
life and death,but the boundarybetweensciencefiction and socialreality
is an optical illusion.
Contemporarysciencefiction is full of cyborgs- creaturessimultaneouslyanimal and machine,who populate worlds ambiguouslynatural
and crafted.Modem medicineis alsofull of cyborgs,of couplingsbetween
organismand machine,each conceivedas coded devices,in an intimacy
and with a power that wasnot generatedin the historyof sexuality.Cyborg
"sex"restoressomeof the lovelyreplicativebaroqueof fems and invertebrates (such nice organic prophylacticsagainst heterosexism).Cyborg
replicationis uncoupledfrom organicreproduction.Modern production
seemslike a dream of cyborgcolonizationwork, a dream that makesthe
nightmare of Taylorismseem idyllic. And modern war is a cyborg orgy,
codedby C3l, command-control-communication-intelligence,
an $84 billion item in l9B4's U.S. defensebudget.I am makingan argumentfor the
cyborgas a fiction mappingour socialand bodily reality and as an imaginativeresourcesuggesting
someveryfruitful couplings.Michael Foucault's
biopoliticsis a flaccid premonitionof cyborgpolitics,a very open field.
By the late twentieth century our time, a mythic time, we are all
chimeras,theorizedand fabricatedhybrids of machine and organism;in
short, we are cyborgs.The cyborgis our ontolory; it givesus our politics.
The cyborgis a condensedimageof both imaginationand materialreality,
the two joined centersstructuringany possibilityof historicaltransformation. In the traditionsof "Western"scienceand politics- the tradition of
racist,male-dominantcapitalism;the traditionof progress;the tradition of
the appropriationof natureas resourcefor the productionsof culture; the
traditionof reproductionof the self from the reflectionsof the other - the
relationbetweenorganismand machinehasbeen a borderwar.The stakes
in the border war have been the territoriesof production,reproduction,
and imagination.This chapteris an argumentfor pleasurein the confusion
of boundariesand for responsibility
in their construction.It is alsoan effort
to contribute to socialist-feministculture and theory in a postmodernist,
non-naturalistmode and in the utopian tradition of imagining a world
without gender,which is perhapsa world without genesis,but maybealso
a world without end. The cyborgincamation is outside salvationhistory.
Nor doesit mark time on an oedipalcalendar,attemptingto heal the terrible cleavagesof genderin an oral symbioticutopia or post-oedipalapocalypse.AsZne Sofoulisarguesin her unpublishedmanuscripton Jacques
Lacan,Melanie Klein, and nuclearculture,Laclzlein,the most terribleand
perhapsthe most promisingmonstersin cyborgworlds are embodiedin
non-oedipalnarrativeswith a different logic of repression,which we need
to understandfor our survival.
The cyborgis a creaturein a post-genderworld; it has no truck with
bisexuality,pre-oedipalsymbiosis,unalienatedlabor,or other seductionsto
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Ar t if ic ial Liie: C r i t i c a l C o n t e x t s
organicwholenessthrough a final appropriationof all the powers of the
parts into a higher unity. In a sense,the cyborghas no origin story in the
Western sense- a "final" irony since the cyborgis also the awful apocalyptic telosof the "West's"escalatingdominationsof abstractindividuation,
a man in space.An orian ultimate self untied at lastfrom all dependency,
"Western,"
humanist
sense
depends
on the myth of origigin story in the
nal unity, fullness,bliss,and terro! representedby the phallic mother from
whom all humansmust separate,the task of individual developmentand
of history the twin potent myths inscribedmost powerfullyfor us in psychoanalysisand Marxism.Hilary Klein has arguedthat both Marxism and
in their conceptsof labor and of individuationand gender
psychoanalysis,
formation, dependon the plot of original unity out of which difference
must be producedand enlisted in a drama of escalatingdomination of
woman/nature.The cyborgskipsthe step of originalunity,of identification
with nature in the Western sense.This is its illegitimatepromise that
might lead to subversionof its teleologyas StarWars.
The cyborgis resolutelycommitted to partiality,irony,intimacy,and
perversity.It is oppositional,utopian,and completelywithout innocence.
No longer structuredby the polarity of public and private, the cyborg
definesa technologicalpolis basedpartly on a revolutionof socialrelations
in the oikos,the household.Nature and culture are reworked;the one can
no longerbe the resourcefor appropriationor incorporationby the other.
The relationshipsfor formingwholesfrom parts,including thoseof polarity and hierarchicaldomination,are at issuein the cyborgworld. Unlike
the hopesof Frankenstein's
monster,the cyborgdoesnot expectits father
to saveit througha restorationof the garden;that is, throughthe fabricamate, throughits completionin a finishedwhole, a
tion of a heterosexual
city and cosmos.The cyborgdoesnot dreamof communityon the model
of the organicf'amily,this time without the oedipal project. The cyborg
would not recognize
the Gardenof Eden;it is not madeof mud and cannot dreamof returningto dust. Perhapsthat is why I want to seeif cyborgs
can subvert the apocalypseof retuming to nuclear dust in the manic
compulsionto name the Enemy.Cyborgsare not reverent;they do not rememberthe cosmos.They arewaryof holism,but needyf61ssnng6ll6nthey seemto have a natural feel for united front politics, but without the
vanguardparty.The main troublewith cyborgs,of course,is that they are
the illegitimateoffspringof militarism and patriarchalcapitalism,not to
mention state socialism.But illegitimateoffspringare often exceedingly
unfaithful to their origins.Their fathers,after all, are inessential.
I will return to the sciencefiction of cyborgsat the end of this chapter, but now I want to signalthreecrucialboundarybreakdownsthat make
the following pohtlcal-fictional(political-scientific)analysispossible.By
the late twentieth century in United Statesscientificculture, the boundary betweenhuman and animal is thoroughlybreached.The last beachheads of uniquenesshave been polluted if not turned into amusement
parks - language,tool use, social behavior,mental events,nothing really
convincinglysettles the separationof human and anima]- And many
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peopleno longerfeel the need for such a separation;indeed,many branches
of feminist culture affirm the pleasureof connectionof human and other
Iiving creatures.Movementsfor animal rights are not irrationaldenialsof
human uniqueness;they are a clear-sightedrecognition of connection
acrossthe discreditedbreachofnature and culture. Biologyand evolutionary theory overthe last two centurieshavesimultaneouslyproducedmodern organismsas objects of knowledgeand reduced ti,e line between
humans and animalsto a faint trace re-etchedin ideologicalstruggleor
professionaldisputesbetweenlife and social science.Within this framework, teachingmodern Christian creationismshould be fought as a form
of child abuse.
Biological-determinist
ideologyis only one positionopenedup in scientific culture for arguingthe meaningsof human animality.There is much
room for radical political people to contest the meaningsof the breached
boundary.l The cyborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary
betweenhuman and animal is transgressed.
Far from signallinga walling off
of peoplefrom other living beings,cyborgssignaldisturbinglyand pleasurably
tight coupling.Bestialityhasa new statusin this cycleof marriageexchange.
The secondleakydistinctionis betweenanimal-human(organism)and
machine.Pre-cybernetic
machinescould be haunted;therewasalwaysthe
spectreof the ghostin the machine.This dualismsrructuredthe dialogue
betweenmaterialismand idealismthat was settledby a dialecticalprogeny,
calledspirit or history accordingto taste.But basicallymachineswere not
self-moving,self-designing,autonomous.They could not achieve man's
dream,only mock it. They were not man, an author to himself, but only a
l. Research was funded bv an Academic Senate Faculty Research Grant from the University of
Califomia, Santa Cruz. An earlier version of the paper on genetic engineering appeared as "Lieber
Kyborg als Gottin: fiir eine sozialistisch-feministische
Unterwanderungder Gentechnologie,"in
Bernd-PeterLange and Anna Marie Stuby eds, Berlin: Argument-sonderband105, I 984, pp 66-84.
-l-hecyborg manifesto grew from my "New machines, new bodies, new communities: political dilemmas of a cyborg feminist" "The Scholar and the Feminist X: The Question of Technology,"
Conference, BarnardCollege,April 1983.
The people associatedwith the History of ConsciousnessBoard of UCSC havehad an enormous
influence on this paper, so that it feels collectively authored more than most, although those I cite
may not recognizethejr ideas.In particular,membersof graduateand undergraduatefeminist theory
science, and politics, and theory and methods courses contributed to the cyborg manifesto.
Particular debts here are due Hilary Klein, Paul Edwards, Lisa Lowe, and James Clifford.
Parts of the paper were my contribution to a collectively developed session, "Poetic Tools and
Political Bodies: Feminist Approaches to High Technology Culture," I984 Californja American
StudiesAssociation,with History of ConsciousnessgraduatestudentsZoe Sofoulis,'Jupiter space";
Katie King, 'The pleasures of repetition and the limits of identification in feminist science fiction:
reimaginationsof the body after the cyborg'; and Chela Sandoval,"The constructionof subjectivity
and oppositionalconsciousnessin feminist film and video."
Barbara Epstein, Jeff Escoffiea Rusten Hogness, and Jaye Miler gave extensive discussion and
editorial help. Members of the Silicon Valley Research Project of UCSC and parricipants in SVRP
conf'erencesand workshopswere very important, especiallyRick Gordon, Linda Kimball, Nancy
Snyder, Langdon winner, Judith stacey,Linda Lim, Patricia Femandez-Kelly,and Judith Gregory.
Finally I want to thank Nancy Hartsock for years of friendship and discussion on feminist thlory
and feminst science fiction. I also thank Elizabeth Bird for my favorite political button: 'Cyborgs for
EarLhlySurvival
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caricatureof that masculinistreproductivedream.To think they were otherwise was paranoid. Now we are not so sure. Late twentieth-century
machineshavemade thoroughlyambiguousthe differencebetweennarural and artificial,mind and body,self-developing
and exrernallydesigned,
and manyotherdistinctionsthat usedto applyto organisms
and machines.
Our machinesare disturbinglylively,and we ourselvesfrighteninglyinert.
Technological
determinationis only one ideologicalspaceopenedup
by the reconceptionsof machine and organismas coded texts through
which we engage in the play of writing and reading the world,
"Textualization"of everythingin poststructuralist,postmodernisttheory
has been damnedby Marxistsand socialistfeministsfor its utopian disregardfor the lived relationsof dominationthat groundthe "play'of arbitrary
reading.2It is certainlytrue that postmodernisrstrategies,like my cyborg
myth, subvertmyriadorganicwholes(for example,the poem,the primitive
culture, the biologicalorganism).In short,the certaintyof what countsas
nature- a sourceof insight and promiseof innocence- is undermined,
probablyfatally.The transcendentauthorizationof interpretationis lost,
and with it the ontologygrounding"Wesrern"epistemology.
But the alternative is not cynicism or faithlessness,
that is, someversionof abstract
existence,like the accountsof technologicaldeterminismdestroying"man"
by the "machine" or "meaningful political action" by the "text." Who
cyborgswill be is a radicalquestion;the answersare a matter of survival.
Both chimpanzeesand artefactshave politics, so why shouldn't we (de
Waal, 1982;Winner,l980)?3
2 A provocative,comprehensiveargument about the politics and theoriesof "postmodemism"is
made by FredricJameson(1984), ["Post-modernism,
or the cukural Logic of Late capitalism." New
Lelt Re,tieut146: 53-92.1rvho arguesthat postmodemism is nor an oprion, a style among others, but
a.cultural donrinant requiring radical reinventionof left politics from within; there is no longer any
place fiom without that gives meaning to the comfortingfiction of critical distance.Jamesonalso
makesclearwhy one cannot be tbr or againstpostmodernism,an essentiallymoralistmove. My position is that feminists (and others)need continuouscultural reinvention,postmodernistcritique, and
h isto r ica lm a r e r ia lismo: n ly a cyb o rgw oul d have a chance.The ol d domi nati onsof w hi te capi ral i sr
patriarchy seem nostalgicallyinnocent now: They normalizedheterogeneiryinto man and woman,
white and black, for example."Advancedcapitalism"and postmodernismreleaseheterogeneityr4'irhout a norm, and we are flattened, without subjectivity, which requires depth, even unfriendly and
drowning depths. It is time to write The Deuth of the Clinic.The clinic's methods required bodies
and works; we have texts and surfaces. Our dominations don't work by medicalization and normalization any rnore; they work by networking, communications redesign, stress managemenr.
Normalization gives way to auromation, utter redundancy.Michel Foucault'sBinh of thi Cllnlc
(1963) [NewYork:Mntage], Historyof sexaal;ty(1976)
[NewYork: Pantheon], andDisciplineand"
Punish (1975) [New York:Mntage] name a form of power at its moment of implosion.The discourse
of biopolitics gives way to technobabble,the languageof the spliced substantive;no noun is left
whole by the multinationals. These are their names, Iisted from one issue of Science: TechKnowledge, Genentech, Allergen, Hybritech, Compupro, Genen-cor, Syntex, Allelix, Agrigenetics
Corp., Syntro, Codon, Repligen, MicroAngelo from Scion Corp., Percom Data, Inter Syrt"-.,
cyborg- corp., Statcom corp., Intertec. If we are imprisoned by language, then escape from that
prison-houserequireslanguagepoets, a kind of cultural restrictionenzFne to cut the code; cyborg
heteroglossiais one form of radical cultural politics.
3 . d e wa a l,F r a n s( 1 9 8 2 ) .ch im p u nzeeP ol i ti cs:P w erandsaA mmgrheApes.N ew york:H arper&
Row; Winner, Langdon ( 1980)."Do Artifacts Have Polirics)"Dued.alas109 ( t ): | 2l-36. [Ed.]
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The third distinction is a subsetof the second:The boundarybetween
physicaland non-physicalis very imprecisefor us. Popphysicsbookson the
consequencesof quantum theoryand the indeterminacyprinciple are a kind
of popular scientific equivalentto Harlequin romancesas a marker of radiThey get it wrong,but they are
cal changein Americanwhite heterosexuality:
on the right subject. Modem machinesare quintessentiallymicroelectronic
devices:They are everywhereand they areinvisible.Modern machineryis an
irreverentupstartgod,mockingthe Father'subiquity and spiritualiry.The silicon chip is a surfacefor writing; it is etchedin molecularscalesdisturbed
only by atomic noise,the ultimateinterferencefor nuc]earscores.Writing,
power,and technologyareold partnersin Westernstoriesof the origin of civilization, but miniaturizationhas changedour experienceof mechanism.
Miniaturizationhas turned out to be about power; small is not so much
beautiful as pre-eminentlydangerous,asin cruise missiles.Contrast the TV
setsof the 1950sor the newscamerasof the 1970swith the TV wrist bands
or hand-sizedvideo camerasnow advertised.Our best machinesare madeof
sunshine;they are all light and cleanbecausethey are nothingbut signals,
electromagnetic
waves,a sectionof a spectrum,and thesemachinesareeminently portable,mobile- a matterof immensehuman pain in Detroit and
Singapore.People are nowhere near so fluid, being both material and
opaque.Cyborgsare ether,quintessence.
The ubiquity and invisibilityof cyborgsis preciselywhy thesesunshinebelt machinesare so deadly.They are as hard to seepolitically as materially.
They are about consciousness
- or its simulation.They are floatingsignifiers movingin pickup trucks acrossEurope,blocked more effectivelyby
the witch-weavingsof the displacedand so unnatura]Greenhamwomen,
who read the cyborgwebsof power so verywell, than by the militant labor
of older masculinistpolitics, whose natural constituencyneeds defense
jobs. Ultimatelythe "hardest"scienceis aboutthe realmof greatestboundary confusion,the realmof pure number,pure spirit, C3l, cryptography,
and
The
are
and
light.
the preservation
of potentsecrets.
new machines soclean
mediatinga new scientificrevolution
Their engineersare sun-worshippers
associatedwith the night dream of post-industrialsociery.The diseases
evokedby theseclean machinesare "no more" than the minusculecoding
changesof an antigenin the immune system,"no more"than the experience
of stress.The nimble fingersof "Oriental"women,the old fascinationof little Anglo-SaxonVictoriangirls with doll'shouses,women'senforcedattention to the small take on quite new dimensionsin this world. There might
be a cyborgAlice taking account of thesenew dimensions.Ironically,it
might be the unnaturalcyborgwomenmakingchips inAsia and spiraldancing in SantaRita iail4 whoseconstructedunities will guideeffectiveoppositionalstrategies.
boundaries,potent fusions,
So my cyborgmyth is about transgressed
peoplemight exploreas one
and dangerouspossibilitieswhich progressive
4 . Ap r a ctice a to n ce b o th sp ir itu a l andpol i ti cal thatl i nkedguardsandarrestedanti nucl eardemonsrratorsin the Alameda Countv iail in Califomia in the earlv I980s.
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part of neededpolitical work. One of my premisesis that most American
socialistsand feministssee deepeneddualismsof mind and body,animal
and machine,idea]ismand materialismin the socialpractices,symbolic
formulations,and physicalartefactsassociatedwith "high technology"and
scientific culture. From One-DimensionalMan (Marcuse, 1964) to The
Death of Nature (Merchant, l9B0),5 the analyticresourcesdevelopedby
have insisted on the necessarydominationof technics and
progressives
recalled us to an imagined organic body to integrate our resistance.
Another of my premisesis that the need for unity of peopletrying to resist
of dominationhas neverbeen moreacute.But
world-wideintensification
a shghtlyperverseshift of perspectivemight better enableus to contestfor
meanings,as well as for other forms of power and pleasurein technologicallymediatedsocieties.
From one perspective,a cyborgworld is about the final impositionof
a grid of control on the planet, about the final abstractionembodiedin a
wagedin the nameof defense,about the final approStarWarsapocalypse
priation of women'sbodies in a masculinistorgy of war (Sofia, 1984).6
From anotherperspective,a cyborgworld might be about lived socialand
bodily realitiesin which peopleare not afraid of their joint kinship with
animals and machines,not afraid of permanentlypartial identities and
contradictorystandpoints.The political struggleis to see from both perspectivesat once becauseeachrevealsboth dominationsand possibilities
unimaginablefrom the other vantagepoint. Singlevision producesworse
illusionsthan doublevision or many-headedmonsters.Cyborgunities are
monstrousand illegitimate; in our present political circumstances,we
could hardly hope for more potent myths for resistanceand recoupling.I
Iike to imagineLAG, the LivermoreAction Group,asa kind of cyborgsociety,dedicatedto realisticallyconvertingthe laboratoriesthat most fiercely
and commitembodyand spewout the tools of technologicalapocalypse,
ted to building a political form that actually managesto hold together
ivitches, engineers,elders, perverts,Christians,mothers, and Leninists
long enough to disarm the state. Fission Impossibleis the name of the
affinity groupin my town. (Affinity:relatednot by blood but by choice,the
appealof one chemicalnucleargroup for another,avidity.)7. . .
5. Marcuse, Herbert (1964). One-Dimensional Man: Studies in thz ldeology of Advanced Industiul
Society. Boston; Beacon; Merchant, Carolyn (1980). The Death of Natilte: Womzn, Ecolagt,and thc
Scimtifc Revobtion. New York: Harper & Row. [Ed.]
6. Sofra,Zoe(1984). "JupiterSpace."Paperdeliveredat theAmerican StudiesAssociation,Pomona,
cA. [Ed.]
7. Without explicit irony, adopting the spaceshipeartVwhole earth logo of the planet photographed
from space,set off by the slogan"Love Your Mother," the May 1987 Mothers and Others Day action
at the nuclear weapons testing facility in Nevada none the less took account of the tragic contradictions of views of the earth. Demonstrators applied for offrcial permits to be on the land from officers
of the Westem Shoshone tribe, whose territory was invaded by the U.S. government when it built
the nuclear weapons test ground in the 1950s.Arrested for trespassing,the demonstrators argued
that the police and weapons facility personnel, without authorization from the proper officials, were
the trespassers.One affinity group at the women's action called themselves the Surrogate Others;
and in solidarity with the creatures forced to tunnel in the same gound with the bomb, they enacted
a cyborgian emergence from the constructed body of a large, non-heterosexualdesert worm.
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THE INFORMATICSOF DOMINATION
In this ar-rempl
ar an episremorogicar
and politicarposition,I wourdlike to
a picture
jndebtedto sociarisr.
pi;;;;
;kerch
and fem".1ti,,
inist principle,sof^of.possibre
design.The
f.ame for my sketchit *, uv r#""t"rrt u'd
importanceof rearrangements
in world-wide social ,"i"rir"r"ri"a to science a-ndtechnology.I argue for a politics
rooted in claims about funda_
mentalchangesin t-henatJreor.turi,-rr.",
and g"nde,r^
system of world order anarogous.inits.noveriy
"-".gtng
,r,i r.op" ,o",ii,"l
.r""t"a
ny
industrialcapitalism:*",Ir" hv;ngrhrougf
from an organic,
industrialsocietyto a porymorpho"us,
" -ou"_"nt
infoLation
system- from ail work
to all play, a deadlv gime. Srmurt"neo-urrf
makriar and ideorogicar,the
dichotomiesmav b" I"pres.ed in the foldung
chart of transitionsfrom
the comfortableold hieiarchicalaornirrurion,
to rhe scarynew nerworksI
havecalledthe informaticsof dominurio",
Representation
Simulation
Bourgeoisnovel,realism
Sciencefiction, postmodernism
Organism
Biotic component
Depth, integrity
Surface,boundarv
Heat
Noise
Biologyas clinicalpractice
Biologyas inscription
Physiology
Uommunications
engineering
Smallgroup
Subsvstem
Perfecdon
Optimization
Eugenics
PopulationControl
Decadence,Magic Mountain
Obsolescenc
e, FutwreShoclz
Hygiene
StressManagement
Microbiology,tuberculosis
Immunology,AIDS
Organicdivisionof labor
Ergonomics/cybernetics
of labor
Functionalspecialization
Modular construction
Reproduction
Replicarion
Organicsexrole specialization
Optimal geneticstraregies
Biologicald"ter-inirm
Evolutionaryinertja,constraints
Communityecolosv
Ecosystem
Racialchain of being
Neo-imperialism,
United Nadons
humanism
Scientificmanagement
in home/
Clobal factory/Elecrronic
couage
ractory
Family/Market/Factory
Women in the IntegratedCircuit
Family wage
Comparableworth
Public/Privare
Cyborgcitizenship
Nature/Culture
Fields of differenie
Co-operation
Communications
enhancement
Freud
Lacan
Sex
Geneticengineering
Labor
Robotics
Mind
Artifi cial Intellisence
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SecondWorld War
White CapitalistPatriarchy
Star Wars
Informaticsof Domination
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This list suggestsseveral interesting things. First, the objects on the righthand side cannot be coded as "natural," a realization that subverts naturalistic coding for the left-hand side as well. We cannot go back ideologically or materially. It's not just that "god" is dead; so is the "goddess." Or both
are revivified in the worlds charged with microelectronic and biotechnological politics. In relation to objects Iike biotic components, one must think
not in terms of essential properties, but in terms of design, boundary constraints, rates of flows, systemslogics, costs of lowering constraints. Sexual
reproduction is one kind of reproductive strategy among many, with costs
and benefits as a function of the system environment. Ideologies of sexual
reproduction can no longer reasonably call on notions of sex and sex role
as organic aspectsin natural objects like organisms and families. Such reasoning will be unmasked as irrational, and ironically corporate executives
reading Playboyand anti-pom radical feminists will make strange bedfellows in jointly unmasking the irrationalism.
Likewise for race, ideologies about human diversity have to be formulated in terms of frequencies of parameters, like blood groups or intelligence scores.It is "irrational" to invoke concepts like primitive and civilized.
For liberals and radicals, the search for integrated social systems gives way
to a new practice called "experimental ethnography" in which an organic
object dissipatesin attention to the play of writing. At the level of ideology,
we see translations of racism and colonialism into languages of development and under-development, rates and constraints of modernization. Any
objects or personscan be reasonablythought of in terms of disassemblyand
reassembly; no "natural" architectures constrain system design. The financial districts in all the world's cities, as well as the export processing and
free-trade zones, proclaim this elementary fact of "late capitalism." The
entire universe of objects that can be known scientifically must be formulated as problems in communications engineering(for the managers)or theories of the text (for those who would resist). Both are cyborg semiologies.
One should expect control strategiesto concentrate on boundary conditions and interfaces, on rates of flow acrossbound2lis5 - and not on the
integrity of natural objects. "lntegrity' or "sincerity" of the Western self gives
way to decision procedures and expert systems.For example, control strategies applied to women's capacities to give birth to new human beings will be
developed in the languages of population control and maximization of goal
achievement for individual decision-makers. Control strategies will be formulated in terms of rates, costs of constraints, degreesof freedom. Human
beings, like any other component or subsystem,must be localized in a system architecture whose basic modes of operation are probabilistic, statistical. No objects, spaces,or bodies are sacred in themselves;any component
can be interfaced with any other if the proper standard, the proper code, can
be constructed for processing signals in a common language. Exchange in
this world transcends the universal translation effected bv capitalist markets
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that Marx analyzedso well. The prMleged pathologyaffecting all kinds of
components in this universe is stress- communications breakdown
(Hofness, l9B3).8The cyborgis not subjectto Foucault'sbiopolitics;the
cyborgsimulatespolitics,a much morepotentfield of operations.
This kind of analysisof scientific and cultural objects of knowledge
which have appearediristorically since the SecondWoild War preparesus
to notice someimportant inadequaciesin feminist analysiswhich has proceededas if the organic,hierarchicaldualismsorderingdiscoursein "the
West" sinceAristotle still ruled. They have been cannibalized,or as 7ne
Sofia (Sofoulis) might put it, they have been "techno-digested."The
dichotomiesbetweenmind and body,animal and human, organismand
machine,public and private,natureand culture,men and women,primitive and civilizedare all in questionideologically.The actual situation of
women is their integration/exploitation into a world system of
production/reproduction
and communicationcalledthe informaticsof domination. The home,workplace,market,public arena,the body itself - all
can be dispersedand interfacedin nearly infinite, polymorphousways,
with large consequencesfor women and others- consequencesthat
themselvesare very different for different people and which make potent
oppositionalinternationalmovementsdifficult to imagineand essentialfor
survival.One important route for reconstructingsocialist-feministpolitics
is through theoryand practiceaddressedto the socialrelationsof science
and technology,including crucially the systemsof myth and meanings
structuring our imaginations.The cyborg is a kind of disassembledand
reassembled,
postmoderncollectiveand personalself. This is the self feministsmust code.
Communicationstechnologiesand biotechnologiesare the crucial
tools recraftingour bodies.These tools embody and enforce new social
relations for women world-wide.Technologiesand scientific discourses
can be partially understoodas formalizations,i.e., as frozenmoments,of
the fluid social interactionsconstituting them, but they should also be
viewedas instrumentsfor enforcingmeanings.The boundaryis permeable
between tool and myth, instrumentand concept,historicalsystemsof
social relations and historical anatomiesof possible bodies, including
objects of knowledge.Indeed, myth and tool mutually constitute each
other.
Furthermore,communicationssciencesand modernbiologiesare constructedby a common move- the translationot'the world into a problem
of coding,a searchfor a commonlanguagein 'uvhichall resistanceto instrumental control disappearsand all heterogeneitycan be submittedto disassembly,reassembly,
investment,and exchange.
In communicationssciences,the translationof the world into a problem in coding can be illustrated by looking at cybernetic (feedback-
8. Hogness, E. Rusten (1983). "Why Stress? A Look at the Making of Stress, 1936-56."
Unpublished paper. [Ed.]
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controlled) systemstheoriesapplied to telephonetechnology,computer
design,weaponsdeployment,or databaseconstructionand maintenance.
In eachcase,solutionto the key questionsrestson a theoryof languageand
control; the key operationis determiningthe rates,directions,and probabilitles of flow of a quantitycalledinformation,The world is subdividedby
boundariesdifferentiallypermeableto information.Informationis just that
l<indof quantifiableelement(unit, basisof unity) which allows universal
translation,and so unhinderedinstrumentalpower (calledeffectivecommunication).The biggestthreatto suchpoweris interruptionof communication.Any systembreakdownis a functionof stress.The fundamentalsof
this technologycan be condensedinto the metaphorC3l, commandcontrol-communication-intelligence,
the military'ssymbolfor its operations
theory.
In modernbiologies,the translationof the world into a problemin coding can be illustratedby moleculargenetics,ecology,sociobiological
evolutionary theory and immunobiologl.The organismhas been translatedinto
a writing technolproblemsof geneticcodingand read-out.Biotechnology,
ogy,informsresearchbroadly.In a sense,organismshaveceasedto existas
objectsof knowledge,givingway to biotic components,i.e., specialkinds
of information-processing
devices.The analogousmovesin ecologycould
be examinedby probingthe historyand utility of the conceptof the ecosystem. Immunobiologyand associatedmedicalpracticesare rich exemplars
of the privilegeof codingand recognitionsystemsas objectsof knowledge,
as constructionsof bodily realiryfor us. Biologyhere is a kind of cryptography. Researchis necessarilya kind of intelligence activity. Ironies
abound.A stressedsystemgoesawry;its communicationprocessesbreak
down; it fails to recognizethe differencebetweenself and other. Human
babieswith baboonheartsevokenationalethical perplexiry- for animal
rightsactivistsat leastasmuch as for the guardiansof human purity.In the
United Statesgaymen and intravenousdrug usersare the "privileged"victims of an awful immune systemdiseasethat marks(inscribeson the body)
confusionof boundariesand moral pollution (teichlea lgBT).e
But theseexcursionsinto communicationssciencesand biologyhave
been at a rarefiedlevel; there is a mundane,largelyeconomic reality to
supportmy claim that thesesciencesand technologiesindicatefundamental transformationsin the structureof the world for us. Communications
technologiesdependon electronics.Modern states,multinationalcorporations, military power,welfarestateapparatuses,
satellitesystems,political
processes,fabricationof our imaginations,labor-controlsystems,medical
constructionsof our bodies, commercialpornography,the international
division of labor, and religiousevangelismdepend intimarely upon electronics. Microelectronicsis the technical basis of simulacra;that is, of
copieswithout originals.
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9. Treichler, Paula (1987). "AIDS, Homophobia, and Biomedical Discourse; An Epidemic of
Signification."October 43: 3l-70.
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Microelectronicsmediatesthe translationsof labor into robotics and
word processing,sex into geneticengineeringand reproductivetechnologies,and mind into artificialintelligenceand decisionprocedures.The new
biotechnologiesconcem more than human reproduction.Biology as a powerful engineeringsciencefor redesigningmaterialsand processeshas revolutionary implications for industry perhapsmost obvious today in areasof
fermentation,agriculture,and energy.Communicationssciencesand biology are constructionsof natural-technicalobjectsof knowledgein which
the differencebetweenmachineand organismis thoroughlybluned; mind,
body, and tool are on very intimate terms. The "multinational"material
organizationof the productionand reproductionof daily life and the symbolic organization
of the productionand reproductionof culture and imagination seemequallyimplicated.The boundary-maintaining
imagesof base
and superstructure,
public and private,or materialand ideal neverseemed
more feeble.
(1980)imageof womenin the integratI haveusedRachelGrossman's
ed circuit to namethe situationof womenin a world so intimatelyrestructured throughthe socialrelationsof scienceand technology.l0I used the
odd circumlocution,"the social relationsof science and technology,"to
indicatethat we are not dealingwith a technologicaldeterminism,but with
a historicalsystemdependingupon structuredrelationsamongpeople.But
the phraseshould alsoindicatethat scienceand technologyprovide fresh
sourcesof power, that we need fresh sourcesof analysisand political
action (Latour,l9B4).I I Someof the rearrangements
of race,sex,and class
rootedin high-tech-facilitated
socialrelationscan makesocialist-feminism
more relevant to effective progressivepolitics. . . .
CYBORGS:A MYTH OF POUICAL IDENTITY
I want to concludewith a myth aboutidentityand boundarieswhich might
inform late twentieth-centurypolitical imaginations.I am indebtedin this
story to writers like JoannaRuss, SamuelR. Delany,John Varley,James
Tiptree Jr.,OctaviaButler,Monique Wittig, and VondaMclntyre.l2 These
are our story-tellersexploringwhat it meansto be embodiedin high-tech
worlds. They are theoristsfor cyborgs.Exploring conceptionsof bodily
boundariesand social order, the anthropologistMary Douglas (1966,
lgZO;tl shouldbe creditedwith helpingus to consciousness
about how
10. Grossman,Rachel (1980). "Women'sPlace in the IntegratedCircuit." RadicalAmeica l4 (l):
29-50.
I I . Latour, Bruno (l984). Les Microbes,Gwne et Puix, Ruivi des lndhrctions. Paris: M6taili€.
12. Monique Wttig is a French f'eminist,author of The Lesbbn Body (1973, New York: Avon), as
well as a t'eminist utopian novel, Les Cweillieres. All others in this list are American science fiction
q'riters. Flarawaycredits the follou'ingessayfor bringing these writers to her attention: Katie King
(198a), "The Pleasureof Repetitionand the Limits of Identification in Feminist Science Fiction:
Reimaginationsof the Body After the Cyborg."Paperdeliveredat the American StudiesAssociation,
Pomona,CA. [Ed.]
13. Douglas,Mary(1966). PuityundDanger. London: Routledge(1970).NaturalSynfuok. London:
Cr e sse t.IEd .]
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fundamentalbody imageryis to world view, and so to political language.
French feministslike Luce Irigarayand Monique Wittig, for all their differences,know how to write the body;how to weaveeroticism,cosmology,
and politics from imageryof embodiment,and especiallyfor Wittig, from
imageryof fragmentationand reconstitutionof bodies.la
American radical feminists like Susan Griffin, Audre Lorde, and
Adrienne Rich haveprofoundlyaffectedour political imaginations- and
perhapsrestrictedtoo much what we allow as a friendlybody and political
They insist on the organic,opposingit to the technological.
language.l5
But their symbolicsystemsand the relatedpositionsof ecofeminismand
feminist paganism,replete with organicisms,can only be understoodin
Sandoval'sterms as oppositionalideologiesfitting the late twentieth century.
They would simply bewilder anyonenot preoccupiedwith the machines
of late capitalism.In that sensethey are part of the
and consciousness
cyborg world. But there are also great riches for feminists in explicitly
embracingthe possibilitiesinherentin the breakdownof cleandistinctions
between organismand machine and similar distinctionsstructuring the
Westernself. It is the simultaneityof breakdownsthat cracksthe matrices
of dominationand opens geometricpossibilities.What might be learned
from personaland political "technological"pollution) I look briefly at two
overlappinggroups of texts for their insight into the construction of a
potentiallyhelpful cyborgmyth: constructionsof womenof colorand monstrousselvesin feminist sciencefiction.
Earlier I suggestedthat "women of color" might be understoodas a
cyborgidentity,a potent subjectivirysynthesizedfrom fusionsof outsider
identities and in the complex political-historicallayeringsof her biomythography.. . . There are materialand culturalgridsmappingthis potential. Audre Lorde (t984) capturesthe tone in the title of her Sister
Outsider.In my political myth, Sister Outsider is the offshore woman,
whom U.S. workers,female and feminized,are supposedto regardas the
enemy preventing their solidarity,threateningtheir security. Onshore,
inside the boundaryof the United States,SisterOutsideris a potential
amidst the racesand ethnic identitiesof women manipulatedfor division,
competition, and exploitationin the same industries."Women of color"
industries, the real
are the preferred labor force for the science-based
women ftr whom the world-widesexualmarket,labor market,and politics
of reproductionkaleidoscopeinto daily life. YoungKoreanwomen hired in
the sex industry and in electronicsassemblyare recruited from high
schools,educatedfor the integratedcircuit. Literacy,especiallyin English,
distinguishesthe "cheap"femalelabor so attractiveto the multinationals.
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14. Wittig, Monique (1973).TheLesbhnBody. NewYork:Avon;Irigaray,Luce (1977).CeSaeQti
N'en estpasUa. Paris:Minuit. [Ed.]
I 5. But all these poets are very complex, not least in their treatment of themes of llng and erotic,
decentred collective and personal identities. Griffin, Susan (1978). Womm and Nuture: Thc Roaing
Inside Her. New York: l{arper & Row; Lorde, Audre (1984). Sister Outsifur. Trumansberg, NY:
Crossing;Rich,Adrienne (1978).'lheDreanof aCommonlnngrnge. NewYork Norton.
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Contrary to orientalist stereorypesof the "oral primitive," literacy is a
special mark of women of color, acquired by U.S black women as well as
men through a history of risking death to learn and to teach reading and
writing. Writing has a special significance for all colonized groups. Writing
has been crucia] to the Western myth of the distinction between oral and
written cultures, primitive and civilized mentalities, and more recently to
the erosion of that distinction in "postmodernist" theories attacking the
phallogocentrism of the West, with its worship of the monotheistic, phallic, authoritative, and singular work, the unique and perfect name.
Contests for the meanings of writing are a major form of contemporary
political struggle. Releasing the play of writing is deadly serious. The poetry
and stories of U.S. women of color are repeatedly about writing, about
access to the power to signify; but this time that power must be neither
phallic nor innocent. Cyborg writing must not be about the Fall, the imagination of a once-upon-a-time wholeness before language, before writing
before Man. Cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not on the basis
of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the
world that marked them as other.
The tools are often stories, retold stories, versions that reverse and displace the hierarchical dualisms of naturalized identities. In retelling origin
stories, cyborg authors subvert the central myths of origin of Western culture. We have all been colonized by those origin myths, with their longing
for fulfrllment in apocalypse.The phallogocentric origin stories most crucial for feminist cyborgs are built into the Iiteral technologies - technologies rhat write the world, biotechnology and microelectronics - that have
recently textualized our bodies as code problems on the grid of C3l.
Feminist cyborg stories have the task of recoding communication and
intelligence to subvert command and control.
Figuratively and literally, language politics pervade the struggles of
women of color; and stories about languagehave a special power in the rich
contemporary writing by U.S. women of color. For example, retellings of the
story of the indigenous woman Malinche, mother of the mestizo "bastard"
race of the new world, master of languages,and mistress of Cort6s, carry
special meaning for Chicana constructions of identity. Cherrfe Moraga
(1983) in Loving in the War Yearsexploresthe themes of identity when one
never possessedthe original language, never told the original story never
resided in the harmony of legitimate heterosexualityin the garden of culture, and so cannot base identity on a myth or a fall from innocence and
right to natural names,mother'sor father's.16Moraga'swriting, her superb
literacy, is presented in her poetry as the same kind of violation as
Malinche's mastery of the conqueror's language- a violation, an illegitimate production, that allows survival. Moraga's language is not "whole," it
is self-consciously spliced, a chimera of English and Spanish, both conqueror's languages.But it is this chimeric monster, without claim to an original
16. Moraga, Cherrte (1 983). Lwing in the War Years:Lo que Nunca Pas6por Sus LaDios. Boston:
South End. [Ed.]
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languagebeforeviolation,that crafts the erotic, competent,potent identities of women of color. SisterOutsider hints at the possibility of world survivalnot becauseof her innocence,but becauseof her ability to live on the
boundaries,to write without the foundingmyth of originalwholeness,with
of final return to a deathlyonenessthat Man has
apocalypse
its inescapable
imaginedto be the innocentandall-powerfulMother,freedat the End from
anotherspiral of appropriationby her son. Writing marks Moraga'sbody,
affirmsit as the bodyof a womanof color,againstthe possibilityof passing
into the unmarkedcategoryof the Anglo father or into the orientalistmyth
of "originalilliteracy"of a mother that never was. Malinche was mother
here, not Eve before eating the forbidden fruit. Writing affirms Sister
neededby the phalOutsider,not the Woman-before-the-Fall-into-Writing
logocentricFamilyof Man.
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Writing is pre-eminentlythe technologyof cyborgs,etchedsurfacesof the
late twentieth century.Cyborgpolitics is the strugglefor languageand the
struggleagainstperfect communication,againstthe one code that transThat is
latesall meaningperfectly,the centraldogmaof phallogocentrism.
why cyborgpolitics insist on noiseand advocatepollution, rejoicingin the
illegitimatefusionsof animaland machine.Theseare the couplingswhich
make Man and Womanso problematic,subvertingthe structureof desire,
the force imaginedto generatelanguageand gender,and so subvertingthe
structureand modesof reproductionof "Western"identity,of nature and
culture, of mirror and eye,slaveand master,body and mind. "We" did not
originallychooseto be cyborgs,but choice groundsa liberal politics and
epistemologythat imaginesthe reproduction of individuals before the
wider replicationsof "texts."
From the perspectiveof cyborgs,freedof the need to groundpoliticsin
"our" privilegedpositionof the oppressionthat incorporatesall other dominations,the innocenceof the merelyviolated,the groundof thosecloserto
nature, we can seepowerful possibilities.Feminismsand Marxismshave
imperativesto constructa revolurun agroundon Westernepistemological
and./ora
tionarysubjectfrom the perspectiveof a hierarchyof oppressions
latent position of moral superioriryinnocence,and greaterclosenessto
nature. With no availableoriginal dream of a common languageor original
symbiosispromisingprotectionhom hostile "masculine"separation,but
written into the play of a text that has no finally privilegedreadingor salvation history to recognize"oneself'asfully implicatedin the world, freesus
of the need to root politics in identification,vanguardparties,purity, and
mothering.Strippedof identity,the bastardraceteachesaboutthe powerof
the marginsand the importanceof a motherlike Mahnche.Womenof color
have transformedher from the evil mother of masculinistfear into the originally literate mother who teachessurvival.
This is not just literary deconstruction,but liminal transformation.
Everystorythat beginswith originalinnocenceand privilegesthe return to
wholenessimaginesthe dramaof life to be individuation,separation,the
birth of the self, the tragedyof autonomy,the fall into writing, alienation;
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that is, war,temperedby imaginaryrespitein the bosomof the Other.These
plots areruled by a reproductivepolitics- rebirthwithout flaw,perfection,
abstraction.In this plot women are imaginedeither better or worse off, but
all agee they havelessselfhood,weakerindividuation,more fusion to the
oral, to Mother,less at stakein masculineautonomy.But there is another
route to havingless at stake in masculine autonomy,a route that does not
passthroughWoman, Primitive, 7-,ero,the Mirror Stageand its imaginary It
passesthroughwomen and otherpresent-tense,
illegitimatecyborgs,not of
Woman born, who refuse the ideologicalresourcesof victimization so as to
have a real life. These cyborgsare the people who refuse to disappearon
cue, no matter how many times a "Westem"commentatorremarkson the
sad passing of another primitive, another organic group done in by
"Westem"technology,
by writing.lTThesereal-lifecyborgs(for example,the
SoutheastAsian villagewomen workersin Japaneseand U.S. electronics
firms describedbyAihwa Ong)18areactivelyrewriting the texts of their bodies and societies.Survivalis the stakesin this play of readings.
To recapitulate,certain dualismshavebeenpersistentin Westem traditions; they haveall been systemicto the logicsand practicesof domination
of women,peopleof color,nature,workers,animals- in short, domination
of all constitutedas others,whosetask is to mirror the self. Chief among
these troubling dualisms are self/other, mind/body, culture/nature, male/
female, civilized/primitive,reality/appearance,whole/part, agent/resource,
maker/made,active/passive,right/wrong, truth/illusion, totaVpartial, God/
man. The selfis the One who is not dominated,who knowsthat by the service of the other,the otheris the one who holdsthe future,who knowsthat
by the experienceof domination,which givesthe lie to the autonomyof the
self.To be One is to be autonomous,to be powerful,to be God; but to be
with
One is to be an illusion,andsoto be involvedin a dialecticof apocalypse
the other.Yet to be other is to be multiple, without clear boundary frayed,
insubstantial.
One is too few,but two aretoo many.
High-techculture challenges
thesedualismsin intriguingways.It is
not clearwho makesand who is madein the relationbetweenhuman and
machine.It is not clear what is mind and what body in machinesthat
resolveinto codingpractices.Insofaras we know ourselvesin both formal
discourse(for example,biology)and in daily practice (for example,the
homework economy in the integratedcircuit), we find ourselvesto be
cyborgs,hybrids, mosaics,chimeras.Biologicalorganismshave become
17. The convention of ideologically taming militarized high technolory by publicizing its applications to speech and motion problems of the disabled/differentlyabled takes on a special irony in
monotheistic, patriarchal, and frequently anti-semitic culture when computer-generatedspeech
allows a boy with no voice to chant the Haftorah at his bar mitzvah. See Sussman,Mc (1986).
["Personaf Tech: Technology Lends a Hand." The Washington Post Magazine. 9 November, pp.
45-56.] Making the alwayscontext-relativesocialdefinitionsof "ableness"particularlyclear,military
high-tech has a way of making human beingsdisabledby definition, a perverseaspectof much automated battlefield and Star Wars R&D. See Welford lWelford, John Noble (l Ju]y 1986). "Pilot's
Helmet Helps lnterpret High Speed World-" NeuTYort Times, pp. 2l , 24.1
l8- Ong, Aihwa (t987). Spiri* oJ Besistunceand Capitalist Discipline: Factory Workers in Malaysia.
Albany: SUNY P [Ed.]
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biotic systems,communicationsdeviceslike others. There is no fundamental, ontologicalseparationin our formal knowledgeof machine and
organism,of technical and organic.The replicant Rachel in the Ridley
Scott film BlndcRunner standsas the imageof a cyborgculture'sfeaq love,
and confusion.
One consequence
is that our senseof connectionto our toolsis heightby manycomputerusershas becomea
ened.The trancestateexperienced
staple of science-fictionfilm and cultural jokes. Perhapsparaplegicsand
other severelyhandicappedpeoplecan (and sometimesdo) havethe most
intense experiencesof complexhybridizationwith other communication
devices.Anne McCaffrey'spre-feministTheShip Who Sang( I 969) explored
of a cyborg,hybrid of girls brain and complexmachinery
the consciousness
formed after the birth of a severelyhandicappedchild. Gender,sexuality,
embodiment,skill:All werereconstitutedin the story.Why shouldour bodby skin?
ies end at the skin, or include at best other beingsencapsulated
From the seventeenthcenturv till now. machinescould be animatedgivenghostlysoulsto makethem speakor moveor to accountfor their orderly
developmentand mentalcapacities.Or organismscould be mechanizedreducedto body understoodas resourceof mind. Thesemachinelorganism
For us, in imaginationand in other
relationshipsare obsolete,unnecessary.
practice,machinescan be prostheticdevices,intimatecomponents,friendly selves.We don't need organicholism to give impermeablewholeness,the
total woman and her feminist variants (mutants?).Let me conclude this
point by a very partial readingof the logic of the cyborgmonstersof my second groupof texts,feministsciencefiction.
The cyborgspopulatingfeminist sciencefiction makeveryproblematic
the statusesof man or woman,human,artefact,memberof a race,individual entiry or body.Katie King clarifieshow pleasurein readingthesefictions
is not largelybasedon identification.StudentsfacingJoannaRussfor the
first time, studentswho havelearnedto take modernistwriters like ]ames
Joyceor Vryinia Woolf without flinching, do not know what to make of The
Adventuresof Alyx or The FemaleMam, wherecharactersrefusethe reader's
searchtor innocent wholenesswhile grantingthe wish for heroic quests,
exuberanteroticism,and seriouspolitics.The FemaleMan is the story of
four versionsof one genoty?e,all of whom meet, but eventaken together
do not make a whole, resolvethe dilemmasof violent moral action, or
remove the growing scandalof gender.The feminist science fiction of
SamuelR. Delany,especiallyTalesof Nev1ryon,mocksstoriesof origin by
redoing the neolithic revolution,replayingthe founding movesof Westem
civilizationto subverttheir plausibility.JamesTiptreeJr.,an author whose
fiction was regarded as particularly manly until her "true" gender was
revealed,tells talesof reproductionbasedon non-mammaliantechnologies
like alternationof generationsof male broodpouchesand male nurturing.
John Varleyconstructsa supremecyborgin his arch-feministexplorationof
woman-technological
device on
Gaea, a mad goddess-planet-trickster-old
whose surfacean extraordinary afiayof post-cyborgsymbiosesare spawned.
Octavia Butler writes of an African sorceresspitting her powersof transfor-
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mation againstthe geneticmanipulationsof her nval (Wild Seed),of time
warpsthat bring a modem U.S. blackwomaninto slaverywhereher actions
in relationto her white master-ancestor
determinethe possibiliryof her own
birth (K;ndred), and of the illegitimate insights into identiry and community of an adoptedcross-species
child who came to know the enemyas self
(Survivor). ln Dawn (1987), the first installment of a series called
Xenogenesis,
Butler tells the sto{y of Lilith Iyapo, whose personal name
recallsAdam's first and repudiatedwife and whosefamily name marks her
statusas the widow of the son of Nigerianimmigrantsto the United States.
A blackwomanand a motherwhosechild is dead.Lilith mediatesthe transformation of humanity through genetic exchange with extra-terrestrial
Iovers/rescuersldestroyers/genetic
engineers,who reform earth's habitats
after the nuclear holocaustand coerce survivinghumans into intimate
fusion with them. It is a novel that interrogatesreproductive,linguistic, and
nuclearpolitics in a mythic field structuredby late twentieth-centuryrace
and gender.
Becauseit is particularlyrich in boundarytransgessions,
VondaMclntyre's
Superlurninalcan closethis truncatedcatalogueof promisingand dangerous monsterswho help redefinethe pleasuresand politics of embodiment
and feminist writing. In a fiction where no characteris "simply" human,
human statusis highly problematic.Orca, a geneticallyaltereddiver,can
speakwith killer whalesand survivedeepoceanconditions,but she longs
to explorespaceas a pilot, necessitating
bionic implantsjeopardizingher
kinshipwith the diversand cetaceans.
tansformations areeffectedby virus
vectors carrying a new developmentalcode, by transplant surgery by implants of microelectronicdevices,by analoguedoubles,and other means.
Laeneabecomesa pilot by acceptinga heart implant and a host of other
alterationsallowing survivalin transit at speedsexceedingthat of light,
Radu Dracul survivesa virus-caused
plaguein his outerworldplanet to find
himselfwith a time sensethat changesthe boundariesof spatialperception
for the whole species.AII the charactersexplorethe limits of language;the
dream of communicatingexperience;and the necessityof limitation, partiality,and intimacy evenin this world of proteantransformationand connection. Supeiluminal stands also fior the defining contradictionsof a
cyborgworld in anothersense;it embodiestextuallythe intersectionof feminist theoryand colonialdiscoursein the sciencefiction I havealludedto in
this chapter.This is a conjunctionwith a long history that many "First
World" feministshave tried to repress,includingmyselfin my readingsof
Superluminalbeforebeingcalledto accountby 7ne Sofoulis,whosedifferent location in the world system'sinformaticsof domination made her
acutely alert to the imperialist moment of all sciencefiction cultures,
including women'ssciencefiction. From an Australianfeminist sensitivity,
Sofoulis rememberedmore readily Mclntyre's role as writer of the adventures of Captain Kirk and Spockin ffs StarTiel<seriesthan her rewriting
the romancein Superluminnl.
Monsters have alwaysdefined the limits of community in Western
imaginations.The Centaursand Amazonsof ancient Greece established
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the limits of the centeredpolis of the Greekmale human by their disruption of marriageand boundarypollutions of the warrior with animality and
were the confusedhuman
woman.Unseparatedtwins and hermaphrodites
material in early modern Francewho groundeddiscourseon the natural
- all crucial to
and supematural,medicaland legal,portentsand diseases
establishingmodern identiry.The evolutionaryand behavioralsciencesof
monkeysand apeshavemarkedthe multiple boundariesof late twentiethcentury industrial identities.Cyborg monstersin feminist sciencefiction
define quite different politicalpossibilitiesand limits from thoseproposed
by the mundanefiction of Man and Woman.
There are severalconsequencesto taking seriouslythe imagery of
cyborgsasother than our enemies.Our bodies,ourselves;bodiesare maps
of power and identity.Cyborgsare no exception.A cyborgbodyis not innocent; it was not born in a garden;it doesnot seekunitary identity and so
generateantagonisticdualismswithout end (or until the world ends); it
takes irony for granted.One is too few, and two is only one possibility.
Intensepleasurein skill, machineskill, ceasesto be a sin, but an aspectof
embodiment.The machineis not an it to be animated,worshipped,and
dominated.The machine is us, our processes,an aspectof our embodiment. We can be responsiblefor machines;theydo not dominateor ttreaten
us. We areresponsiblefor boundaries;we arethey.Up till now (onceupon
a time), femaleembodimentseemedto be given,organic,necessary;and
femaleembodimentseemedto mean skill in motheringand its metaphoric extensions.Only by beingout of placecould we take intensepleasurein
machines,and then with excusesthat this was organicactivity after all,
appropriateto females.Cyborgsmight considermore seriouslythe partial,
fluid, sometimesaspectof sexand sexualembodiment.Gendermight not
be global identity after all, even if it has profound historicalbreadth and
depth.
The ideologicallychargedquestionof what counts as daily activity,as
experience,can be approachedby exploitingthe cyborgimage.Feminists
haverecendyclaimedthat women aregivento dailiness,that women more
than men somehowsustaindailylife, and sohavea privilegedepistemological position potentially.There is a compellingaspectto this claim, one
that makesvisibleunvaluedfemaleactivityand namesit as the groundof
life. But the groundof life?What aboutall the ignoranceof women,all the
exclusionsand failuresof knowledgeand skill?What about men'saccess
to daily competence,to knowinghow to build things,to take them apart,
to play?What about other embodiments?Cyborggenderis a local possiRace,gender,and capitalrequirea cyborg
bihty takinga globalvengeance.
theory of wholesand parts.There is no drive in cyborgsto produce total
theory but there is an intimate experienceof boundaries,their construction and deconstruction.Thereis a myth systemwaitingto becomea political languageto groundone way of lookingat scienceand technologyand
challengingthe informaticsof domination- in order to act potently.
One last image:organismsand organismic,holistic politics dependon
metaphorsof rebirth and invariablycall on the resourcesof reproductive
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sex. I would suggestthat cyborgshave more to do with regenerationand
are suspiciousof the reproductivematrix and of most birthing. For salamanders,regenerationafter injury such as the loss of a limb, involves
regrowthof structureand restorationof function with the constantpossibility of twinning or other odd topographicalproductionsat the site of former injury. The regrownlimb can be monstrous,duplicated,potent. We
haveall beeninjured,profoundly.We requireregeneration,
not rebirth, and
the possibilitiesfor our reconstitutioninclude the utopian dream of the
hope for a monstrousworld without gender.
Cyborgimagerycan help expresstwo crucial argumentsin this essay:
First, the productionof universal,totalizingtheoryis a major mistakethat
missesmost of reality,probablyalways,but certainlynow; and second,taking responsibilityfor the socialrelationsof scienceand technologymeans
refusingan anti-sciencemetaphysics,a demonologyof technology,and so
meansembracingthe skillful task of reconstructingthe boundariesof daily
life, in partial connectionwith others,in communicationwith all of our
parts.It is not just that scienceand technologyarepossiblemeansof greaf
human satisfaction,as well as a matrix of complex dominations.Cyborg
imagerycan suggesta way out of the mazeof dualismsin which we have
explainedour bodiesand our tools to ourselves.This is a dream not of a
commonIanguage,but of a powerfulinfidel heteroglossia.
It is an imagination of a feminist speakingin tonguesto strike fear into the circuits of the
supersaversof the new right. It means both building and destroying
machines,identities,categories,relationships,spacestories.Though both
are bound in the spiraldance,I would ratherbe a cyborgthan a goddess.
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