Cyborg vs. Cybergoddess: A Review of “A Cyborg Manifesto”

One of the significant works in cyberstudies is Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto.” She argues that she would rather be a cyborg as it is a “social reality… our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction.” This centerpiece of organic substance and mechanical precision forms the basis of Haraway’s religion. The boundary breakdowns listed by Haraway allows for the advancement of her cause. The biological-determinist ideology of the scientific community is broken down by the political-scientific conflict created by the intelligent design argument. Also, the distinction between man and machine is greatly subdued by the advancement in medical and communication technology. The physical and non-physical is becoming blurred as more emphasis is placed on information.

Haraway places all of her faith in “the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism.” Her use of cyborg imagery in the article suggests a method of dealing with the dualisms that are present. The game of semantics with the use of cyborg literacy to create a body of work that is uniquely cyborg comes from the intra-disciplinary approach to knowledge gathering. It uses the Internet as its primary method of analysis and dissemination. The irony is that for the cyborg to connect to the populace in whole, it must disconnect from its source of support and information, the World Wide Web.

The problem that comes from all of the breakdowns and literature is that a cyborg cannot hope to become a separatist figure in its own “nation.” It must abide by the decisions of the connecting group. This is where I would argue that the cyborg does have its limitations. Its “Borgian” need to remain a part of the command-control-communication intelligence of the cyborg nation does limit the possibility of separate actions. The cyborg would remain connected to the whole. The whole is the cyborg’s method of nourishment. If we were to eliminate from the mix the cyborgs that need their mechanical parts for true survival (e.g., pacemaker patients), the remaining cyborg has an “artificial need” for mechanical connect. The need could equal an addiction to the gratification that the web provides.

That is why I propose a new model of connecting to the Internet, that of the cybergod/cybergoddess. While cybergod/cybergoddess fail to remove the sexual nature from the user, it does introduce the possibility of the avataral representation of the user. This “cleaner” presentation of one’s self online adds a key element lacking in the cyborg model, the wireless. Cyborg, according to Haraway, Judith Squires and other cyberfeminists, must remain essentially in the materialist world to connect to the circuitry of the modern world. I would argue that cybergoddess could remove herself from the hardware of the node and present herself online or offline without the “lag” associated with removal. Therefore, she is more powerful in both forms, online and offline, than the cyborg would be.