Monday, September 19, 2016

Cyborg Manifesto-What if?

In Donna Harraway's Cyborg Manifesto, she writes about how she thinks cyborgs in a way mirror the liberation of women in the late twentieth century since they move us from something that is science fiction into something that is real. We are liberated from life and death, and we would be outside of the salvation history of human kind. Cyborgs are a hybrid between machinery and humans, and yet, there are important distinctions. For example, cyborgs themselves are genderless. So, what would a genderless society look like? There would be no distinction in roles between men and women, no oppression based on gender, and an unnatural way for reproduction. Harraway writes about how much of the Western politics and religious traditions would be gone, along with their restrictive male dominated culture. In addition, a world with cyborgs would be one without end since they cannot return to dust, and cannot form families. The social structure would be broken, and no group can form a hierarchy as the one that exists in our world. They would have no reverence to anything holy since they would be unable to connect with it, but they might be into united politics. Harraway also contests that under the evolutionary theory, humans and animals are very closely related to each other, and that there exists a connection between nature versus culture that has not been fully recognized up to this date. Another distinction she made was between the organic nature of animals and humans versus the mechanical nature of cyborgs. Cyborgs would lack a clear will of their own since their will would mirror that of their creators, which are mankind. They would also lack what we refer to as a soul. Another major difference between cyborgs and humans is that modern technology allows for ubiquity under the quantum mechanics principle, so cyborgs could be nonphysical or easily invisible if made to be so. Humans, on the other hand, have a determinate position in time.
All of the parallels that Harraway makes between the natures of both humans and cyborgs gives us an introspective perspective of humanity, but also lets us ponder on the possibilities that would exist in a post-human society.

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