So, this post is going to be kind of iffy. I don't know how anyone could read this piece by Donna Haraway because as soon as I would read, I thought I understood what she was talking about, but then I suddenly realized I had no idea what I reading. Anyone else have that effect? Needless to say, the reading was extremely difficult for me and I'll even admit... I didn't finish the entire thing.
I tried to keep in mind that the piece focused on feminism and how it connects to the cyborg. This was my means to keeping on track, because I found myself thinking the cyborg represented the difference between men and women, but then I thought; was it? When she writes, "The stakes in the border war have been the territories of production, reproduction, and imagination," I thought the border war was between the male dominant role versus the female (those who were necessary in order to maintain the stability). But that wasn't the case.
Pretty soon I came to somewhat understand this piece as a way of expressing how technology makes up the person who is using it and it this case, it revolves around women. This should have been a given, given the topic of this class, but it was still very hard to grasp. She goes on to discuss the fact that cyborgs can be haunted and have actual spirits, of the "ghost in the machine." This is what threw me off my path. What does that even mean?? I guess this could be where everyone could respond, because I've really thought about it, but I'm confused why cyborgs would need a ghost or what significance it has to the piece?
After basically discussing the same thing, but in different ways, I found myself on page 18 and pretty much fed up. I couldn't continue, because I kept having to go back and re-reading things to figure out how she got from point A to point B. Alas, I got frustrated and gave up. So, I'll be the first to admit that I didn't completely do the assignment... but at least I tried, right?
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3 comments:
I must say that a lot of people have felt the same way about the article...what is she talking about...what is the connection she's trying to make. After the weeks discusion...I have come to the conclusion of she is a woman writing this back when the internet was very well in its infant stage..she was trying to convey computers, internet are all going to dictate the life if we do not change the way in which it is heading!
Heh, yeah pretty much. ;_)
Your post got me thinking about the border war as mentioned by Haraway and I found this on another website: "The anchoring metaphor for her essay, Haraway writes, is the image of cyborg. She defines this image in four different ways. The first is as a "cybernetic organism." The second is as "a hybrid of machine and organism." The third is as "a creature of lived social reality", and the fourth is as a "creature of fiction."
While this doesn't exactly make a crystal clear picture of what is meant by Haraway when she says "cyborg" it at least shows that even she defines 4 different ways. I can't wait to re-read this in grad school and be like: "what the hell was so hard to understand about this back then?" LOL, we'll see.
You aren't the only one who didn't finish the whole thing. Haraway's use of "hidden" metaphors and crazy language really threw me off. When I have to look up several words per paragraph in a reading I lose interest altogether.
But, yeah, the border war between male and female presented an interesting idea. It was confusing to me what the hell she was even doing with that until we discussed it in class.....and I walked away thinking about the idea of not having a border between male and female. What I kind of got from Wendy's class discussion was that, other than the biological/physicalness of gender, Haraway wants to argue feminism in a way that doesn't bring the concept of FEMALE VS. MALE into it. If that makes any sense at all. Probably not. I kind of know what I'm talking about but.....
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